


you made an island of me

by orphan_account



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon, F/M, Gen, Multi, Originally posted from tumblr and moved to ao3, Other, Tumblr Prompts, prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-04-05
Packaged: 2018-03-20 11:36:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 100
Words: 69,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3648894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>collection of all of my darling pan fics that are either one-shots or were prompted by tumblr users.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Darling, You Can't Save Him Now (originally posted on Nov. 11th, 2013)

**Author's Note:**

> i'm currently in the middle of tagging, deleting, and sorting through posts on my blog right now and have decided that i should post my fics here instead of having them on tumblr. the original posts are going to be deleted, as well as the pages to the blog posts in my blog, seeing as how i have left the fandom and am uncertain about continuing any unfinished fics and the prompts saved in my drafts.
> 
> i still ship darling pan, but i think that i'm done writing for OUAT, but i'm still thinking about the things that need finishing. i'm not completely abandoning the pandom here.
> 
> thank you for your patience with me and your encouragement and love for my writing, to everyone along the way. if you have any questions, please feel free to visit me on [tumblr](http://llaracrofts.tumblr.com).

The wind is a sharp, painful reminder on her skin – a reminder that says she should not be out here, that she should be indoors, and out of the streets. The icy air stings her winter-kissed cheeks, her pale neck, her ungloved hands (they’re trembling again).

Her ears feel as if they’ll fall off, and she’s clenching her teeth

so hard

to keep them from clacking together, because she’s scared someone might hear the chattering of her teeth – or the

pounding

of her heart. It’s pounding

so loudly

as she hurries along the empty sidewalk, under the street lamps – and she’s terrified someone will

catch

her.

(A part of her wants to get caught, out here, so late at night as the clouds full of snow sit above her head – above the rooftops of London. So, maybe, she can have an excuse to not come out here anymore – a flimsy, stupid reason that excuses her from seeing him for the rest of her days, even though she made a promise.)

She’s near, now. She can tell. The street signs – the rundown buildings – it looks the same as it did last week, when she’d last found herself running back home – hurtling away from him and his voice, into the snow, into the dead of night – and the pounding of her heart is making her head light, and she finds that she (again) wants to throw up, because he’s close - sometimes, she feels sick when he’s close –

There is a warm hand around her wrist. Bony fingers close around it, so tightly, and she’s barely opened her mouth – to scream, to cry, to protest, to cry out – when she is yanked (so unkindly) to the left, and then there is warmth next to her, still holding onto her. The bones in his fingers are wound tightly around her knobby wrist – (her hands are still shaking) – and he’s barely touching her, barely making her a sound, and she just wants to go home.

She stares ahead, at the alley wall. She should be used to this, by now – being tugged into dark, secluded corners – being yanked into a narrow, long-forgotten (dark) alley – but she’s not, so she just stares ahead. Her breathing is uneven – like her heartbeat, like her hands, like the way her chest rises and falls. She’s trying so hard to keep calm, but it’s not worth the effort. She’s terrified of being seen out here every time, anyway.

(His chest rises and falls, sharply, but steadily – and she doesn’t have to look at him to know that his eyes are watching her, carefully – examining what he can see in the dark. And he sees so much – because, unlike her, he lives in the dark, while she is terrified of it – because all broken things hide in the dark – and light, fragile ones – like her – don’t know it, don’t like the feel of it ghosting over their bare skin.)

The bony, knobby fingers around her wrist are going to leave a bruise. She’s too cold – but not numb – to feel the pain of the bones underneath the fingers digging into the thin layer of skin that is stretched over her veins, her blood – her bones. She makes a tiny movement with her arm – while flexing her fingers, in a tiny movement – and the hand on her wrist is gone. She looks down at it, idly, looking at anything but him, and wants to sigh, because she knows what this is.

He’s standing close to her – but it’s not like the last time, when his harsh words covered up the demons in his eyes (the demons that are thriving under his skin, the demons that have formed the bruise on her heart, where he made his impression on her last year), when jerky movement prevented her from understanding what he was – from understanding what he’d dragged her into (but she knew that was her own fault.)

She slowly turns her head, and she tries to make out his expression in the darkness of the alley. No snow touches them there – but just outside the alley, on the sidewalk, all evidence of her walking here have vanished (been covered up by the snow). It makes her want to wail, but she keeps her mouth shut, and examines him, just like he’s examining her – for anything he can mock her with, for anything he can use against her.

But tonight – as the snow falls, in big, wet, flakes (if she remembers correctly, he told her once that he both loves and hates the snow all at once) – there’s something off. There are no biting remarks about how late she might be, there are no snide comments about what’s gone on since she’s last seen him – and it takes her a moment to realize that she’s not supposed to see what she’s seeing right in front of her. She’s not supposed to be coming back – even though it’s like something’s pulling her towards him, even though, from another perspective, she just might have a choice on whether or not she wants to sneak out in the dead of night to see this horrid excuse of a boy.

He’s miserable – he makes her miserable too. He makes everyone miserable, in fact.

(Everybody hates him, and a part of her does, too.)

He’s twisted, and broken, and sour – rotten to the core – but there’s pain, there, too. If you look behind his eyes, if you really take a good, long look, you can see the pain – the pain and the ghosts and the words he won’t ever say and the demons that just love to dance under his skin and crawl under hers (they like to remind her of what he is).

He’s a boy who’s been molded into a cruel thing – a freak – because of the horror he’s witnessed, of the pain he’s both inflicted and taken in – you can tell, if you looked him dead in the eye, that there is everything wrong with him and nothing actually good. His heart is blackened with time spent of living through a hell no one should have even known of in the first place.

(It had been too late to save him – he liked telling her that, when she first met him – when she thought he could be redeemed, could be saved, from the blackness inside of him that just eats up whatever good might come into his heart the moment it comes to exist. She knows better now – and she’ll never know that he wishes she could save him from himself.)

The promise – the one she’s kept, the one she wants to break, so badly – is the reason why she’s here. He is alone (better off that way, according to everyone who’s known him), but that’s not good – it can’t be. He might not ever be better – be more human – but she can be there. His heart may be black – it may be rotten – but she knows that it still beats.

Wendy knows Peter’s chest is not hollow. There is a heart that still beats – it’s still there, and it is proof that he’s got one. And she’s not quite sure why it’s still beating – why he’s not just walking around half-dead, with a heart that’s going to turn to ashes and dust someday, inside of him, because he’s a chaotic mess and he’s so fucked up that he’s so far gone – so beyond fixing – that she knows that all she can do is speak to him. She can try to help – even if he tries to shove her away, with his remarks, with his words.

He tries to see how far he can go – before she finally goes off and leaves him to drown in his darkness, in his pain and demons and ghosts – but she hasn’t gone yet –

He’s saying things to her – soft things, not nice things – oh no, never that – but they sound soft, and quiet, and she can tell that he’s going to cry, because he sounds so angry, and she wants to reach out – to comfort him – but she doesn’t – and it’s just all so wrong, this is. A boy – so young – should not be how he is now. He should have had the chance – to be happy, to bright, to have a chance to learn what it’s like, being afraid of the dark. But he never had it, and all she can do is listen as words spill out his mouth – like they do sometimes, when he forgets to be a manipulative, conniving monstrosity of a human being – and his voice is cracking in places it shouldn’t, and he’s not just saying things, she realizes, he’s talking at her, like she can save him – and – and –

“There are words,” he says, stepping closer – he’s so close, so close – “words carved into my bones, Wendy Darling, and they’re screaming at my heart.”

She wishes she could quiet the voices – she wishes she could make it all better. But she made a promise – to do what, she doesn’t remember, but this is one of the few, rare moments that tells her that she can stay, for just a bit longer.

(She still wants to get caught.)

If there was ever a reason for her to stay in the alley, this night, she cannot find it – nor will he – because she stays, it’s far too late for her to be here, and she must get back to home. He’s still talking – talking to her now, not at her, and all she can do is murmur things – because he is a shell of a human being and he cannot be human but he is human enough that she knows she’s got to try something – to do some good – but every time she tries, he reminds her – soundlessly, with the words he says that are carved into his bones, that he cannot be saved – not by her, not by anything or anyone else.

(She wishes, with all her heart, that she could, though.)


	2. Holding Your Hands In His (originally posted on Nov. 11th, 2013)

Cold fingers dance across the small expanse of cream-colored skin. His fingers are always cold, and she can never ask him why. It hasn’t been long (she doesn’t know how long it’s been since she got here), but Neverland is already looking like she’s known it for  _too long_  – but  _him_? He  _loves_  it here – he is the  _king_ , and, right now, he’s murmuring something about  _his queen_ , something  _soft_ , something  _sweet_ , and it makes her breath catch in her throat – she makes a choking sort of noise.

The dance that his fingers have begun slow as they trail from her jawline, to her neck, to her shoulders, and down her arms – to the point where his touch is feather light, and she’s trying as best as she  _can_  to keep still – because she’s seen his temper, she’s seen his  _moods_ , she knows him well enough already,  _even though it hasn’t been too long_  since that shadow (blasted thing) took her away.

His eyes are dark in the dim light that the night provides. She’s not sure where they are – but she tried to run away again. His lips are quirked into a slight frown ( _a pout_ ) as his fingertips find her hands, clenching into fists. She’s not shaking, she swears she’s not, but he can see that she’s still trying to see if she can get off the island – she’s less desperate than she was when she first arrived ( _was dumped quite ungraciously on the ground at his feet, as a matter of face_ ), oh, he can  _tell_. She’s beginning to accept that he’s not about to let her leave – not anytime soon – and he worked  _so hard_ , rebuilding her room for her.

_(Wendy has yet to see his gift.)_

_(But Felix said she’d like it, even if she wants to leave.)_

Her hair is not as wild as some of the Lost Boys’, though, it is unkempt. There is dirt stuck deep under her nails and smudges on her ( _porcelain_ , he thinks) cheeks. She’s a beautiful thing, that knows what he is – a beautiful thing ( _he wants her, all to himself, as his queen_ ) that still doesn’t speak to him about her world (though he cares little.) He remembers her babbling – something about  _in the books this would not happen_ – and since he had no idea what to think of it, he hadn’t thought of it. Curious, he was, though – because Wendy is a curious, unique little thing, and Peter  _likes_  unique little things.

(Especially if their name is Wendy.)

He takes her hands – pries them open, so he can grasp her fingers in his, and finds that they are damp with sweat. That means she’s nervous – it means she’s not just  _running blindly_  out into the jungle now, trying to escape. It means she had a plan – or at least, it means she thought she had a plan – before she was caught.

He looks at her hands, sees them limp in his hold, and then glances up at her. She’s looking back at him – but, unlike before, she’s not angry, or crying, or upset – no, she just seems  _tired_ , and it makes his eyes return to the (still soft) hands that he likes to keep held in his (don’t tell Felix that, though – the Lost Boy’ll never let him live  _that_  down).

He wants to smirk, wants to be snide – he wants to  _snark at her_ , for being such an idiot (fool), trying to escape ( _again_ ). He wants to lock her away, so she’ll stop running, but he likes seeing her free – likes hearing her laugh (it was only once – but it was at him, and it was a laugh, and it sounded better than what she must think  _angels_  sound like), he likes hearing her talk about things she likes – but not when she talks about “back home”. No, that doesn’t make him happy – makes him want to keep her close, make sure she somehow knows that  _this is more than game to him_.

He then remembers he still has the room to show her. Felix  _had_  said she’d like it – and he finds he wants to see her smile ( _a lot_ ).

He’s always liked little treasures that he can keep all to himself, he thinks, as he begins to lead her away – back to where her room is (she likes walking more than flying, for some reason – which is stupid, because _everyone_  should like to fly), his hand still holding hers. She’s not crying, not moping – not ignoring him.  _This is good_ , he thinks. Of course, tomorrow, she might be sour – might try to hurl her eggs at him like she did a while ago (she’d hit Felix instead; it had been hilarious). He thinks about the treasure he’s holding hands with – tugging back to where he can keep her close, back to where he knows she can’t (won’t leave) – because nobody’d expect  _Peter Pan_  to be lonely in Neverland, now, would they?

Her hands are warm in his, he thinks, and his are – well, he doesn’t know, but when his fingers dance across her skin (he can’t stop himself from being near her – it’s like  _impulsive_  and  _stupid_  but nothing can be done about it), he sees something shift behind her eyes, and wonders if she will ever know that he  _needs_ something like her – even though this is really all wrong, and he’s  _evil_  (she’s said it like a billion times already), because – maybe –  _maybe, maybe, maybe_ – he can smile, and  _mean it_ , because he likes that something is already shifting behind her eyes – bit, by bit, by little,  _itty bitty bit_.

It makes his heart do a weird summer-sault, that is very out-of-character, and is  _extremely_  annoying – and it’s all her fault.

( _It’s his little secret, you know. And he will never tell.)_


	3. The Unfamiliarity of Jealousy (originally posted on Nov. 12th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "Maybe something more dark? Letting in evidence his possessiveness?" (via sofiirainbow)

Wendy’s a kind thing, the Lost Boys find. She’s a kind, pretty thing – who they come to like, even though she is a girl, and she wears a dress, and no one’s seen a girl in a long time – before the girl with the golden curls. (It’s not like they’ve got anything to complain about, though. After her few first days of moping around, screaming, and desperate attempts at escaping Pan, she’s seemed to have decided to stop being so stupid.)

(It makes them wonder – were all girls this stupid, or had it just taken Wendy more time them the Lost Boys to realize that Pan would never let them go?)

They like to talk to her, when she’s not anywhere near Pan. When he’s nearby, she turns into a quiet, mousy little thing – and it makes them all grumble, because she turns stupid (mostly) whenever Peter comes around. They like to talk to her – they like to play with her. She’s really, really good at hide-and-seek (Felix says so), and she’s nice and kind but sometimes she just doesn’t know things she should about now – after being on island for a while.

One of the things she’s got to know by now is to not go certain places with the Lost Boys when Pan is grumpy. No one ever asks what’s got their leader in a bad mood (it was probably Wendy, though, because she still tries to run away – but she always gets dropped at his feet. She’s stopped crying, too – she only glares at them now when she’s upset), but they’d like to – so they got a heads up.

Because, when Pan is one of his moods (Wendy called him a big baby once and that had earned her quite the nasty game – she still wouldn’t go far, out into the island, after dark, because of what she’d said) any number of things could happen. Usually bad things – things that end up with someone crying, someone with tear tracks streaking their dirty faces – but when he gets moody enough to come across a place on the island where she (and they) is – well, it’s not a pretty thing to witness.

In the early days of Wendy being a novelty and brand new thing and a doll Pan could toy with when the Lost Boys weren’t chasing her down because A.) she’d decided she could run or B.) they were playing “you’re it” (she never won), Wendy had said something nasty to Pan. Felix had heard it – heard the whole thing, and had told the others, in a low, murmuring tone that told them that this was probably going to happen often.

Wendy had, apparently, called Pan names – told him exactly what she thought of him – said lots of things that made Peter very, very angry. If you’re smart, you’ll never make him angry. And it seems that Wendy loses her brain sometimes, because she has the ability to make him very, very angry.

He’d tossed away – made sure she’d landed some place far away from him, where he didn’t have to deal with her (wouldn’t have to hear her calling him monster and evil and lost and maybe even lonely – which was absurd, because Peter Pan never got lonely! And Felix – they all – know that there’s something else, something more to everything Pan’s done but they can’t and won’t go about questioning it). The Lost Boys, like always, had found her – to make sure she didn’t try anything funny – had to make sure that she didn’t try and do something that would make Pan shift into an even more worse mood.

One of them had been kind to her – found her wiping her eyes and muttering things the boys had been taught young ladies from London were never supposed to utter under their breath, like she was doing now – and the things they heard – oh, she’d been so lucky that Pan hadn’t been there to hear her. He’d asked her if she’d wanted to play a game – to cheer her up – because, back then, before she’d been shoved away in a cage (like she is now – many of them actually haven’t seen her in so long) – and she had said yes, after encouragement had come from the other Lost Boys who’d been sent to find her.

After a while, her laughter and shouts rang through the trees – could be heard throughout Neverland – and no one had ever heard Wendy laugh quite like that before, and the sound was happy, something she hadn’t been since she’d been on the island, and – and of course, Pan had heard it. He’d heard it, loud and clear – and something, that had been wound up inside him, since she got here, since he saw her, had burst – had snapped – and he hadn’t even been aware of what he’d been doing when he’d decided to see what that darling little Wendy was up to.

He’d found her – all of them – right where he’d thought they’d be, and she had looked so happy, and to see that she was playing tag with the other boys – the ones that were under his command – made something snap all over inside of him. Jealousy is a thing not unknown to Peter Pan – but it’s unfamiliarity – it’s foreignness had only served to sink his mood further, and before anyone could blink – cry out – gasp – be silent – or say anything, his fingers had been wrapped around her wrist, and her protests (angry, angry words that she surely couldn’t have truly meant – right?) fell on deaf ears (he pretended he couldn’t hear her – but oh, how he’d wanted to tell her exactly what was on his mind).

He pulled her away, with the Lost Boys watching. The look on Pan’s face – they never wanted to see it again. The protests of Wendy had faded into the soft noises of the island that took over the night, and none of them said anything – not for a long, quiet while, and when they did, it was Felix telling them to get back to camp – time to do their duties - and they wouldn’t see Wendy until the next morning.

And if you’d looked at her, the morning after Pan had dragged her away, because he’d gotten jealous because he couldn’t make the one thing he wanted happy, you could see that something was different – and it was then, that she’d realized that she was stuck, because Peter was a possessive, cruel, manipulative (greedy, greedy, greedy) being.

(And she was stuck here in Neverland, with the Lost Boys, with him – stuck, stuck, stuck.)


	4. With Every Bit of His Tar-Black Soul (originally posted on Nov. 12th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "(For the one-sentence-prompt) With all the heart of the adolescent devil he was, he wished her back." (via zangetsuh)

He was not one to deny what he felt, not when it was just him, not when he was  _by himself_. It seemed like a lie, and, as much as he loved spinning tells, and telling lies,  _and playing the games she always hated_ , he could not deny that he  _wished her back_.

Sometimes, he would think, on his own, that he was a fool, for letting her go, for not keeping her close, because there’s a gaping hole inside his chest, that no one knows about but him. It has been there, sitting beyond the thin layer of pale skin, stretched tight over bones that had seen more than most would think, if you got a look at him, since …

Well, he didn’t like to dwell on it. Still doesn’t like to think of it, about  _any of it_. Because it  _hurts_ , it hurts  _so much_ , and he can only wish her back. With every secret piece of his tar-black soul, and every bit of his twisted, devil-like heart.

( _Wendy is all that he wants._ )


	5. No Magic Necessary (originally posted on Nov. 14th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “Lying on Marooner’s Rock in the afternoon sun.” (via kate7h)

He hadn’t needed magic to get Wendy up on Marooner’s Rock with him. He’d sent the Lost Boys away, to another place on the island, where she wouldn’t hear their jeers, or their goading, and this was a small mercy.  _Small_ , because she was stuck with him.

But today, there was no game. No trickery. He’d just told her to lie down, to close her eyes, and dream. He’d done the same (the lying down part, anyway), but had kept his eyes open. Trained on the sky. With his heart pounding in his ears.

Magic wasn’t needed.

Magic wasn’t necessary for this, for the way she’s unknowingly curled up beside him, in a tight, little pall, with her curls hiding her face. Magic hadn’t made her scoot close to him, when she’d finally fallen asleep, and this feels  _nice_. Lying in the sun. With a cool sea breeze. And a warm,  _not scorching_ sun. She loves the wind. (Loves it a lot. He knows because she said so, a few weeks ago, long after she’d stopped begging him to let her go and crying and sniveling and doing the annoying thing girls seemed to do more than boys.)

He’s not  _nervous_ , oh no. He’s just surprised. Yes, that’s it. He hadn’t honestly expected this to work, to try and see if she was beginning to see that running from him was a stupid (foolish. idiotic.) thing to do. He hasn’t had to use magic with her in, well, a few weeks, and it’s  _nice_. Kind of.

Maybe, this means that, if he asks her, she’ll stay in Neverland with him, right? Maybe this is a sign? That she’ll stay? If he asked her to choose?

He doesn’t know if she would. Magic wasn’t necessary here. But, if it’s necessary elsewhere (in the future) then …

Well, then she’ll  _go_.

_Leave him alone_.

(Don’t tell anyone that he’s realized he’s scared, though, scared of her leaving. Getting away. When she’s what he wants. What he needs. Don’t tell a soul.)

At a time like this, it’s worth it, not using magic, to make sure she stays near (stays close, like he wants her). It isn’t necesary.

But he’s got this bad feeling. That it will be.

(So he tries to stop hoping, and hoping. He crushes it, makes sure that hope is  _dead_  if Wendy ever finds out it existed in the first place.)

_No use hoping anyway_ , not when he can settle for magic not being necessary right now. Not with her right beside him, turned away from him, her body warm, her breaths calm, with his eyes still trained on the sky in an attempt to distract himself from the painful twinge inside his chest.


	6. Darling, He Remembered You (originally posted on Nov. 15th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “Its a cold night, Wendy is freezing up in her cage and Peter gives her blankets.” (via sunflower5678)

The days are warm, more so than what she was used to, before she’d been taken. London hadn’t known warmth, not like how this place does, she’d thought. The days are warm, but the nights. They’re freezing! Maybe a jungle was supposed to be warm at night, but here? In Neverland? No. Not a lick of warmth could be found within the cage. She’s been clenching her teeth, so they won’t clack together in the near-silence of Neverland.

She’s trying not to make any noise. The Lost Boys, they laughed at her, on nights like this, for her calling out to them, to anything that will  _listen_ , but now she keeps silent. Because they will laugh, and then they’ll just go farther and farther away from her.

Leaving her alone in the dark. In the cold.  _Alone, alone, alone_.

(She misses her brothers.)

Tonight, she’s just focusing on curling into herself, squeezing her eyes shut, because she doesn’t want to open them, and start imagining things in the dark staring back at her. Yes, she’s scared of the dark. Terrified of it, though, she should be  _used_  to it by now. She’s been here a  _long_  time. Long enough for her to know that she never  _will_  actually  _get use_  to this place. It’s just not like her to.

_"Oh, Wendy-bird!_ ”

Her eyes fly open at the sound of the voice below her, on the ground, and she lets out a shriek, because she was focusing on the fact  that he wasn’t anywhere near her, and, what a  _relief_  that was, because  _he laughed along, too_ , and she’d rather throw a book at him right now (along with a thousand other sharp and pointy objects), instead of talking to him (playing games).

But she’s got no choice.  _None_. It’s maddening.

She keeps quiet, and turns her head, to peer at the branch beside her, and knows he’s transported himself up onto the sturdy, swaying branch that’s beside her hanging cage. She can’t see him very well, and she doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to see him, be near him,  _hear him_ , but she hasn’t anywhere else to go but this cage, with her forehead resting against her knees, which have been drawn up to her chest, with her arms tightly wrapped around her calves.

( _She’s so, so **cold**_.)

"Darling," he says, his voice light, his voice  _steady_ , in a sing-song-like manner that makes her want to throw up the meal he’d (personally) conjured up for her earlier that evening. “You look cold.”

This evening was the first time she’d seen him in nearly eight days. When he left her alone, for that long, he got her hoping. Hoping that he’d forgotten about her. So he wouldn’t  _talk_  to her, wouldn’t  _see_  her, wouldn’t  _laugh_  at her. But now here he is, crouching on the branch. His fingers are wrapped around the cylinder-style, wooden bars of the cage, and he is leaning very,  _very_  close to her.

She’s glad he can’t get to her when she’s in the cage.

(Okay, so she knows he  _can_ , but if she tells her that, he won’t get the satisfaction of seeing her begin to shake from the effort of acting like she’s keeping herself together.)

"Aren’t you?" he prompts, tilting his head. Smirk falling a bit. Voice darkening,  _in just that way_ , the way that tells her that she has to respond (she  _must_ ).

She lifts her head from her knees, and looks at him with suspicious eyes. For now, they look flat, and hopeless. It’s no use, asking if she’s free yet, when she’s so obviously  _not_.

"Yes," she says. Her voice is tiny, in the dark ( _she wishes she wasn’t afraid of the dark_ ), with just the two of them together in the tree.

(Her brothers would have happily shoved him out of said tree, she thinks idly.)

"Yes,  _what_?”

She scowls at him, not answering this time. He laughs at her. She turns her head away from him, pulling her limbs in towards her body more, in an attempt to keep  _warm_ , but, like most nights, the effort is wasted.

"Aren’t you curious?"

_Yes_.

"About why you’re here?  _No_.”

"Wendy, darling," his voice is sickly sweet.  _Mocking_.

(Yes, him getting pushed out of a tree right now would be  ** _fantastic_** , thanks.)

 ”What d’you want?” she murmurs into the once-white fabric of her nightgown, feeling tired. Scared. Alone. (Scared of the dark. Scared of the Lost Boy. Scared of Neverland.  _And Peter Pan._ )

"Oh, I can’t be nice every once in a while?"

She peaks out at him, one eye trained on his lithe form in the dark. She can tell he’s smirking at her (can hear it in his voice), and gives him a flat look. Although he can see only her one eye, he knows what her expression is telling him. He sighs.

"Well, I was  _gonna be_. Just this once. Just for you, Wendy, darling.”

She wants to scoff, but stays silent, and keeps her eye on him. Him? Nice?  _Why_? What’d he want  _this time?_

Suddenly, there is a shift in the weight of the cage, and her head snaps up, eyes wide, thinking that he might have disconnected her cage from the rope it hung on (he’d dropped her from the tree before  _once_ , and Felix and done so  _twice_ , under orders to). But her eyes find a large, dark lump at her feet. She glances at Pan. He’s still smirking. Her eyes remain locked on the bundle of  _whatever it is_  as her trembling ( _so cold_ ) fingers reach out and tenatively touch the thing he put in her cage.

To her surprise,  _there is warmth there_. It’s fabric, she realizes with a start, soft, dark,  _warm_  fabric. A smile begins to tug at the flat corners of her mouth, and she can’t help but give out a tiny sound of contentment as she spreads out her legs and yanks the blanket upwards, and is surprised to see that there is  _another_ bundle of fabric under that one.

_He’s given her blankets_.

In seconds, she’s got herself cocooned in soft fabric (that smells like him, but she ignores that bit), and she turns her head, smile still on her face, and she’s surprised to see that he’s still there. And since she’s not screaming, or crying, or doing anything to indicate a  _game_  is being played, she’s even more surprised at the satisfied expression on his face. (Smug.  _Smug_  expression.)

"Just this once," he tells her, softly, and then, he’s gone. He’s left her alone. In the dark. With blankets.

The half-silence settles over her again, and she’s stopped shivering. Stopped her teeth from chattering. She’s got to remember to try and  _attempt_  not to say anything that will set him off, making him unhappy (exasperated with her) next time he lets her out of her cage.

(She’s warm. But it’s only for tonight.  _Just this once_.)


	7. You’ve Just Never Noticed Her Like That Before (originally posted on Nov. 15th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “Peter notices that Wendy is developing more womanly features.” (via peterpanlovesitalianbeef)

Wendy is different from the Boys. Not just because she’s girly, and sometimes whiny, and kinder that anyone Peter’s ever known (gets on his nerves on some occasions). No, it’s because she’s actually (really)  _different._

It’s mostly in her body. (And her moods. She’s moodier sometimes, moodier than anyone else he’s ever come across!) He’s neglected to notice them, the curve of her chest (not flat, like a boy’s), the jutting of her hip bones (they’re curved, unlike a boy’s, curved and unnoticeable wit the nightgown she’s had on for as long as he can remember).

It’s all very strange. And then there are the  _moods_ , that come around every once in a while. She gets  _mad_. She cries easily, but she can get  _mad_. Wendy’s not usually mad (never actually been as mad as those times), and it’s a sight. For one, the Boys (all except for Felix, and, of course, himself) keep their distance, ever since the first time one of her moods popped up, out of nowhere.

There’s her pretty face, the way her eyes shine, even though she’s covered in dirt. There’s also her thin fingers, the awkward (girly?) way she stumbles through the jungle when he lets her out from time to time. It’s all  _so not boy-like._

She’s different, he’s noticed, and he can’t stop noticing. He’s chalked it all up to a few things. One: he’s not around girls ( _ever_ ), so this is probably why he’s been noticing. Two: she’s  _Wendy_ , and you can’t  _not_  notice her. Three: he’s so used to boys that he’s forgotten what it’s like, to be around girls. He doesn’t remember them being quite like Wendy, though.

No, no one  _is quite like Wendy._


	8. He’ll Never Let You Touch the Ground (originally posted on Nov. 15th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “How about Peter taking Wendy for a terrifying, yet exhilarating flight.” (via the-friendly-feely-unicorn)

Hearing her scream is a really funny thing.

He likes to drop her, see her plummet, and then swoop in, and catch her, around her middle, and hug her close as she screams and curses at him (and laughs) as they fly through the air.

It’s a starry night, and he’s dragged her out of her cage. It was impulsive, it was  _boyish_ , and he hasn’t begun regretting it.

They dip, and swoop, and soar in the night air, above the island. He makes sure they stay far, because when they fly close, the joy goes out of her eyes, and then she goes back to being Wendy-who-wants-to-be-free instead of Wendy-who-wants-to-stay-with-Peter-because-she-cares. He throws her up in the air, watches as gravity does its work, before going to her rescue, and then repeating this several times over. They dive upwards and downwards, turn sharply in the cool night air, and all he can hear are her shouts and curses and laughs and breathless cries of  _"Peter!_ " (because she  _never_  calls him that when her two feet are on the ground) as his hands leave her, and catch her. Leave her, and catch her. His hands itch to do this, over and over, and he’s  _smiling,_ really smiling, and he even laughs, because this is what Wendy  _does_ , when she’s like this, when they’re flying.

He keep tossing her up, keeps dropping her from dizzying heights, keeps hearing his name in a high-pitched squeak every time his hands leave her sides, when the firm grip he keeps on her hips suddenly disappear. The way her arms flail, the way she curses at him like she’s going to beat him to death with a spoon if he actually lets her fall to the ground, the way she can never quite  _catch her breath_  when he catches her, and throws her up when she thinks that he’s just going to hold her close for the rest of the flight.

_Everything about flying with Wendy_ , it’s all fantastic, and he likes it,  _likes_  that he can get this side out of Wendy, the side no one else has seen in Neverland,  _loves_  the things it does to her, almost as much as he loves seeing her  _smiling back at him_.


	9. Reminders That Come in the Form of Scars (originally posted on Nov. 16th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "Peter gave Felix the scar on his face and the reason behind it is Wendy." (via calie1003)

Felix tries to ignore the sharp line of pain that’s being drawn down his face, as slowly as a snail travels across a piece of land, and he is gritting his teeth in order to keep himself from crying out, in order to keep from showing any outward signs that  _Pan was causing him pain_. And he  _is_. A knife is being dragged,  _slowly_ , down his face, and he could do nothing but stay still, unless he wanted something  _worse_  than what he was getting.

(And this was pretty bad, because no Lost Boy had ever done anything to make Pan  _this angry_. He was an example, today, of what crossing a line can do to you. Especially if it’s one of Peter’s lines. Especially if that particular line concerned  _Wendy_.)

"Felix," Peter says, quietly, as the rest of the Boys watch in fear-stricken silence, his voice filled with malice, and warning, and  _anger_ , “what did I tell you?”

Felix barely speaks, but his words can be heard by everyone in the jungle clearing, including Wendy, who’s still peering out at them from behind the tree Peter had found her hiding behind. Tear tracks are stark reminders on her dirty face of what line had been cross. Of who had gone too far this time.

"Not to touch her," Felix mutters. Trying his best not to send a glare in her direction. Because that would make Pan even angrier. "Not to talk to her."

Peter titles his head, sneering at him, and finally,  _finally_  yanks the knife away. Felix’s hand flies up to face face, and he feels with wet warmth of blood seeping between his fingers.

“ _Yes_ ,” Peter says, through a snarl, whirling around, to face the other Boys, who are silent, are sullen (are  _scared_ ). “I told you  _all_  not to go near her after what happened yesterday. And what did you do?”

Wendy’s shaking even more. The bruise on her wrist is still there (because these Boys play rough), and the scratches on the palms of her hands sting from where they met the ground (when she’d been shoved out of her cage, out of the tree). Her eyes are still wet, still shining, and her lower lip is trembling. Her knuckles are white (her grip on the bark of the tree is tight), because she’s never seen Peter this mad before.

(But the Lost Boys have. And they should have  _known_  better than this.  _Felix_ , of all people, should have known, too. But they were Boys. Boys didn’t always listen. And this time,  _they should have_.)

Peter can see her out of the corner of his peripheral vision, see that she’s trying so hard to become invisible, like she does when she’s done something  _wrong_ , or when she’s  _scared_ , or  _hurt_. Today, right here, right now, she’s been  _hurt_. And it was Felix who’d pushed her out of the cage, out of the tree, and onto the ground, and therefore, it was Felix who’d gotten his face cut up.

But it was the majority of the Lost Boys Peter was looking at, because now he can’t see her out of the corner of his eye  _at all_  and that means she doesn’t want him to hurt any of the others, and  _that_  just might be why he hasn’t done the same to them as he had to Felix.

For disobeying his orders.

( _For hurting his Wendy-bird_.)

Eventually, he sends them away, after a good,  _short_  lecture of the consequences of doing anything like  _that_  again, and then he is alone, alone with Wendy, and he turns to face the tree she’s still hiding behind. He knows she can still hear the goading laughter, the jeers, inside her head, so he steps forward, calls out her name, softly.

Eventually, her head peaks out from behind the tree. She’s dried her eyes, but he can still sea the streaks of cleaned skin that the tears made. He can see where her dress is a bit dirtier from where she’d wiped her scraped up hands on it.

He holds out his hand to her, and tells her they’ll go for a walk. That she won’t have to go back to her cage just yet.

(Felix doesn’t go near her again, unless it’s an order to.)


	10. He’s Just Making the Most out of This Predicament (originally posted on Nov. 16th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "Peter kidnapps Wendy the second time because a seer says she will be his undoing." (via calie1003)

When the seer tells him  _Wendy_ is his undoing, he think he ought to kill her, this seer, this  _thing_  that sees little bits and pieces of the future. There is no  _possible_ way that that little mouse he sent back (because she is a  _girl_ ) to where the shadow took her from could be his  _very undoing_.

But as time passes, he realizes that a seer that he’s known of hasn’t been wrong. Even if Wendy is a meek girl, and her skittish movements, when he gets near enough to make her start to scramble for anything that might get her away from him, they’re  _harmless_  to him, physically.

But to his blackened, devil heart …

He realizes with a start that he needs Wendy back in Neverland. If she  _is_  his undoing, then he wants to see it coming (wants to have her close by till he finds out what’s going to happen in order for  _her_  to be his undoing).

So he brings her back (again).

Gives everyone a story to believe (everyone does, except he will always know better).

If anyone found out, then they would use her against her.

And  _he will not have that happen._ **  
**

Not if he can do anything about it.


	11. Understand That His Only Weakness Is Her (originally posted on Nov. 17th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: “Peter risks his own like to save Wendy, revealing a weakness to Rumpelstiltskin/Peter almost sacrifices his life.” (via calie1003)

“ _Say that again_ ,” Emma demands, eyes locked on the Dark One as he  _tuts_  softly, because she obviously was going death ‘cause she hadn’t heard him the  _first_  time. “Gold,” she prompts, when he doesn’t answer right away, and he wants to sigh, but just goes ahead and tells her.

Mainly because Regina is giving him the same look Emma is, and Hook and the Charmings don’t look like they want to put up with any bullshit today.

“ _Wendy_  is Pan’s  _weakness_ ,” he hisses through his teeth, slowly, so they understand  _exactly_  what he’s saying. “Saw it with my own eyes.”

"How do we know you’re not lying?" Emma asked.

"We don’t," Regina says, expression dark.

"She’s right, dearie," he chirps, "but I  _did_   see it. Saved her himself from my spell, y’see. A spell that  _really_ could have hurt him, maybe even  _killed_  him. But I missed, and it was heading straight for the cage. And then,” he scoffs, softly, “well, you can guess what happened after that.”

Hook muttered something that sounded a lot like “ _should’a known, mate_ ,” but the comment was ignored (because it was hard to tell if he was telling himself that or if he was telling Rumpel that).

"So, what do we do now?" Emma asks, giving the imp a doubtful look.

He gives her a look that mirrors the distrust she holds for him.

"Go after Wendy, of course."


	12. We’ve Known For A While, You Know (originally posted on Nov. 17th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "prompt: the lost boys gossip about peter and wendy OR tease peter about wendy take as long as u need, I know this is a late prompt but I hope u still do it!" (via anonymous)

It’s only when Peter is one of his fantastically  _rare_  good moods, that the Lost Boys take their chances and decide to tease him. Relentlessly. About his Wendy-bird.

It’s probably one of the most light-hearted things Neverland has ever witnessed, because there is no punishment, no threat, no possible form of pain being dealt out when Pan is in one of  _those_  moods, when he’s smiling freely, when there’s no cruel streak visible (because they know Wendy likes to try and smother the cruelty that runs deep in the roots of Peter and Neverland, but her attempts only last for so long).

They see him, every few months (years? It’s been too long to say exactly), with an easy-going aura about him, and then they take their chances, and throw jeers, and taunts at him. And all he does is scowl (or look flustered, but the former is more likely, because the great Peter Pan  _never_  gets flustered!) at them before going off (probably to find Wendy all over again) and disappearing into the trees.

It’s a great thing, that Wendy’s done to him. Making him a little less menacing every once in a great while.

(But it’s always just a temporary thing.)


	13. Darling, It Looks Like You’ll Be Honoring That Deal You Made With Him All Those Years Ago (originally posted on Nov. 17th, 2013)

As soon as the green  _woosh_  passes through her trembling bones, Wendy shuts her eyes, tight, and sighs, feeling her body sag against the tree.

That’s it.

_Peter Pan has won the game._

She can see the others around her begin to panic, but she does nothing, and only watches them leave her, one by one, in the clearing. Their minds are on Henry, on Bae, on that woman Emma. They’re minds are not with her. They’re going to have to cope with the loss of the game to Pan.

She tries to fight back the shame of lying, the shame, the  _guilt_. The guilt of her lies, her actions, her words. It all comes crashing  _down_  on her, and she lets loose a sob, and curls into herself, her form trembling, because  _it’s all over_. She won’t see her brothers. She won’t see Bae. She won’t get off the island.

It hurts less than it should, but it hurts nonetheless. Her entire body is wracked with sobs, because her mind has left the troubles of others, and has gone to her own, the ones she shoved back into the recesses of her mind, where she’d hoped,  _hoped and hoped and hoped_ , that they could be forgotten.

Maybe these people could’ve saved Henry, saved  _her_ , in another time, but here,  _now_ , the game was over.  _Finally over_ , and Pan. Pan had won. He had known he was going to win.

And she remembers, with a brutal dose of self-loathing, the deal she made, long ago, some time after she came to the island. She remembers their  _deal_ , and tries to dry her tears on her nightgown.

_"Darling, let’s make a deal."_

_She peers up a him through the bars of her cage, eyes narrowed, body closed off. She doesn’t want to play today._

_"Peter, I don’t want …"_

_Doesn’t want to speak to him. Look at him. Get laughed at by him. She wants nothing to do with this horrid, devil-boy._

_"Wendy-bird, this is all your choice. All you have to do is listen, all right?" He sounds exasperated, like she should just listen to him. Hear him out. He already made the deal with her brothers. What more could he want?_

_"You know how we’re looking for someone, very important? So that I can live, and stay in Neverland forever?"_

_She nods, slowly. Better to listen than not. (She’s been shoved to the ground by the Lost Boys enough times in the last few weeks for her sharp words, angry hisses, and little, useless escape attempts.)_

_"Well, this is about what will happen when we find him. When I get his heart."_

_She wants to throw up, just at the mention of this great plan of his. Throw up right on his feet, and then beat him with a stick, maybe with Tink’s help even. But she doesn’t, and stays quiet. For her own sake._

_"I want to make a deal with you," he says, lowering his voice, and his eyes are level with hers, and his long fingers are curled around the bars of her cage, so that she can look nowhere else but at him. "If I do not succeed, you can go free. If I die, you have my permission to leave the island."_

_He’s only saying this because he believes this won’t happen, she thinks quickly, but says nothing. She can’t._

_"And …" something alights in his eyes, something that looks like smugness, and it gives her an anxious feeling, in the pit of her stomach. "… if I win, when I get this heart … I can break the deal with your brothers. And you have to stay with me. Forever. Here, in Neverland."_

_At the time, she had still been optimistic about her chances of getting out of here, about her brothers finding some way to rescue her on their own, by themselves._

_So she had agreed to it._

_(There had been a dangerous light in his eyes as he’d turned to leave her alone in the cage, a light darker than the darkest corners of the jungle she was being kept in.)_

She remembers, as if it were only last week, when she made the deal. And then she  _knows_ ,  ** _knows_** that he’d known that he was going to  _win_  this entire time, and she had been naive enough to believe that she might’ve had the chance to escape. And she had, for a split second, when she’d put her faith into these strangers on the island. Into Bae, into the woman who was Henry’s mother. All of them.

She hears the rustling of bushes, and her heart skips a beat. Her blood feels like someone’s cut her open, and poured hot ashes and freezing snow into her veins, then closed her back up. Her head jerks upward, but its relieved,  _so relieved_ , to see that it’s only Tink.

The wingless fairy knows about the deal she made with Peter, and the look on her face is one of pity. One that tells her that it was worth a try, that these people had done their best, to get them both out of Neverland. But they’d failed. Pan had  _known_  they would.

Tink leaves her, in silence, silently promising that they might talk later, since there is no longer a need for Peter to actually lock her up in her cage, because now she  _cannot leave_.

She lets her head drop back into her arms, and finds that there are no more tears to shed. She sighs, heavily, feeling tired, feeling worn out, like she’s been around too long to deal with this, with Pan (and she is). She’s used to it here, though. She’s been here longer than she ever had stayed in London, and,  _oh god_ , she’s not going to cry again, because she should have suspected this would happen, all this time.

Wendy shudders, glad Peter hasn’t found her yet, glad she can’t hear the others, the adults, and glad that Tink left her alone. They’re just going to go back to how they were, then, she realizes. But with no adults. No thinking about what would have happened if Pan would have  _died_  (she would have laughed, she would have smiled, and screamed, and cried, if he had, she finds).

Some time later, she hears the rustling of bushes again. The jungle sounds healthy, it sounds  _alive_ , sounds  _peaceful_ _,_ too.

Lifting her head, slowly, as if it weighs a ton, she sees Peter,  _thrumming with energy_ , standing before her. His grin ( _selfish, cruel devil-boy_ ) is sharp, and it feels like it’s cutting into her skin (her heart).

He crouches, so he is eye level with her, and she half expects him to zap her back into her cage, because that’s just the kind of thing he likes to do for fun when he has to deal with her.

But instead, he leans in close, and she has to shrink back, so her head is against the tree Bae had set her against. (She tries so hard not to think about what Pan probably did to him, did to the others.)

"You look sad, Wendy-bird," he says, and she can hear cheering in the distance. He’d addressed his Lost Boys before coming to find her, then. He tilts his head at her, and his grin turns into a harsh smirk, one that  _radiates_  how smug he is, about  _all_  of this.

"You remember that deal I made, with you, long ago?" he asks, and she doesn’t nod, nor does she shake her head in response. She just waits for him to  _say it_. “Well, I’m sure you do, and I’m  _also sure_ that you remember the deal I made with your brothers.”

She flinches.

"You know I was going to break it, don’t you, darling? All along?"

She sighs, feels her body slump in defeat of its own accord, and nods this time. He’d told her, shortly after he’d made the deal, that he’d intended to break it as soon as he had suggested it.

"Good."

She cringes as he leans even  _closer_ , and she can  _feel_  the energy coming off of him. It makes her want to be sick, makes her think it just might be  _toxic_.

"I think it’s time to honor that deal you made me," he says, softly, his eyes boring into hers, and all she can do is swallow past her dry tongue, unable to speak. "Wendy, daring,  _Wendy-bird_ ,” he coos, his hands sliding off his knees, where they rested before, to take hers in between his warm, long, nimble fingers. “You’re going to stay here, with me, forever,” he chortles, standing up abruptly, yanking her up with him.

If this had been any other day, he would have let her fall when she stumbled. But she stumbles, and his hands snatch her around her middle, dragging her close to him, and she can hear him murmuring into her hair, and it occurs to her that he might have actually been  _frightened_  at the mere possibility that the adults could have prevailed, could have won  _this game_ , but she doesn’t have time to react to that because his arms around her aren’t letting her go.

"Say it, Wendy,  _darling_ ,” he says. He’s high on his victory, she can tell, and he won’t come down for days, probably. She’ll have to make the most of this, then, she’ll have to try and keep running, since there won’t be any more cages, or tree-houses where she will be forces to stay, because  _she can’t actually leave Neverland_ , and he’s always enjoyed the chase.

_Always_.

"I … "

She thinks of them, all of them, briefly, but then sags against him, in defeat, glad that his shoulder hides her face, hides her defeated expression. “I promised,” she mumbles into the fabric covering his solid, bony shoulder, “I’ll stay here with you, Peter.”

“ _Forever_ ,” he chortles, and when she peaks up at him, (secretly wondering if it will really be all that bad) she sees that his face is alight with the same darkness she’d seen, all those years ago, when she first made that deal with him.

Before she can register the gravity of what this game has cost everyone, everyone who came here to do something  _good_  for a boy who was being tricked into his undoing, Wendy realizes that Peter is tugging her along, skeletal hand clasped over hers. His stride is slowing down, he’s being patient with her clumsy feet tonight.

She thinks,  _'should've never made that deal with Peter Pan._

It’s too late for that, though, too late for regrets. Peter tells her so, as if he can read into the very marrow of her bones, and, he probably can, and now he won’t have to worry about her, leaving Neverland ( _him_ ).  _Ever_. _  
_

_(She should have known he’d been right about this, all along.)_


	14. You Woke Up, Darling, and the Nightgown Was Gone (originally posted on Nov. 20th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "prompt: peter starts giving wendy pants and shirts instead of dresses after an incident involving her nightgown" (via anonymous)

When Peter first begins to corner her, when he first begins to chase her, with  _real intent_ , intent that she’s not familiar with, her first instinct is to claw her way out of that corner, to run as fast as she can, barefoot through the jungle, even though she knows that he’s going to catch her.

It’s all a game to him, a game Wendy has tried her  _best_  to give up on from the start, but he  _hates it, hates it, hates it_ when she does that. His mood becomes dark, stormy, and then she is  _forced_  to run, unless she wants to be hurled up into the air with the knowledge that, when she starts plummeting down towards earth,  _he will step aside and watches with a cruelty in her eyes she’s come to familiarize herself with as he lets her bones shatter_. _  
_

Of course, he’s kind enough to give her a broken arm, a snapped ankle, broken fingers. Never her whole body,  _no_ , then he couldn’t have his  _fun_ , couldn’t very well have an entertaining punching bag, now,  _could_  he?

Sometimes, when he catches her, gripping her arm and yanking her about, or shoving her away with laughter in his voice and a boyish meanness in his eyes isn’t enough for him. He’s high on every victory, but, sometimes, the way he makes sure she knows he’s won (he  _always_  wins) is different from the other times.

Scorching kisses, sometimes frantic, sometimes deliberate fingers everywhere, and skin on fire are usually what ensue when he wants to remind her who is  _king_  of Neverland, to make sure she can never  _forget_. Sometimes, in the morning, she’ll find that he’s left a mark on her neck, on her hip, but there’s always an  _ache_  left over, one that does what Pan intended it to do:  _remind_  her.

Once, after a night of warmth and  _bites_  and whispers that she doesn’t care to recall (because she’s not exactly keen on discussing this subject, even with Tink), she wakes up with her sheets wrapped around her body and a quiet house to greet her. _  
_

Peter never stays long, but when he does stay, longer than just a few minutes, he likes to throw small things at her, likes to annoy her as much as he can, because he is a  _devil child_ , he is forever a  _boy_ , and it’s not nearly has bad as being dropped from an overhang into the ocean below, when he never really taught her how to hold her breath underwater for more than a few seconds.

This morning, though, he’s gone, and she groans, and sits up, and is about to get to her feet, find him, and do her best to antagonize him, because he flicked dirt in her  _eye_  last night, and he’d laughed endlessly as she’d shrieked at him, with words of violence she could never back up, but that was okay with him, because he always said  _it’s the best thing_.

But she looks down at herself, and, to her dismay, realizes that she never put her gown back on, after he’d hung upside down from the rafters of the treehouse, laughing at her while she had tried her best to go to sleep and hide her scarlet-colored cheeks at the same time. She leans down, to where she remembered she’d thrown it in her haste, over the side of the bed, and her eyes narrow when she finds that the floor is barren and there is no mass of crumpled, filthy white fabric to be seen.

She leans to the other side of the bed, and mutters something when she sees that her dress is  _not_ where she thought she left it.

She gets up, sheets wrapped around her body, and begins to groggily search her little tree house, but, as she looks in her dresser and under her bed and behind the rocking chair and in the dusty, cobweb-infested corners, she is beginning to wonder  _just where_  that nightgown went off to -

A sharp bark of laughter makes a screech escape her lips, and she whirls about, one hand clapped over her mouth and the other clutching the sheet tightly to her body, so no one can see the expanse of smooth, milky skin that’s been caked in grime and dirt and sap for the last weeks or so, and when her eyes find that it’s Peter, sitting on her bed, wearing the most  _infuriating_  smirk, she snarls, before thinking anything through, and lunges at him.

In an instant, he’s caught her wrists in his skeletal hands and has drawn them to his chest, so she cannot escape, and he laughs again. “Wendy-bird, are you looking for your  _dress_?”

An indignant sputter makes it past her lips before she can get any coherent, angry words out of her mouth.

“ _Give it back_ ,” she hisses between bared teeth, because if he took it, and does not intend to leave her with  _clothes_ , then she is  _not leaving this place until_  -

"Oh, mouse, you’ll not want  _that_  back,” he says, releasing her wrists, but not without a shove backwards, and when she lands on her back, her hands fly to keep the sheet tightly around her body, and, in turn, the force of her body hitting the wooden floor makes her cringe, but she won’t yelp, she won’t  _cry_. “It’s in  _shreds_.”

The way he says it makes her cheeks flush, and she sputters, getting to her feet unsteadily and slowly, because the white sheet just might trip her, she thinks, if she’s not careful, especially because he’s right in front of her.

"I - what?" she blinks, and, for a moment, her face is filled with a rare bit of confusion, one that she usually fights off with a look of rage or neutrality.

"I ruined it," he said simply, grinning, teeth flashing white wolf’s fangs in the pale light of morning,

Her eyes nearly popped out of her skull, and she swore she saw red, because  _that was her last dress! And -_

"Darling," he says, laughing again, stepping towards her, "look on your dresser." His eyes are dark with a childlike glee that’s been tainted with his tar-black soul, his  _twisted heart_.

She does as he says, seething, but falters a bit when she sees that there are folded clothes that surely hadn’t been there moments ago. She whips her head to the side, to face him, to see that he’s giving her an impatient look, so she takes her time to cautiously step over to the dresser, waiting for something to pop out at her, waiting for something to pop out, eat her up, and swallow her whole.

She sees that they’re  _clothes_ , but not  _girl’s_ clothes. No, they’re for boys, and a bit like his, a bit like the Lost Boys’, and, before she can think about what she’s doing, she picks up the brown, coarse shirt, and holds it up, and inspects it.

When she finds nothing suspicious, she puts it down, and does the same with the trousers. Again, she finds nothing suspicious, so she sets the pair down, too, and turns to face him.

He’s smirking.

"They fit," he said, and, to his blatant delight, at the spark of anger that’s visible in her livid expression.

She sputters, but he continues speaking, ignoring her outraged (hilarious) expression. “Oh, don’t think that they don’t, my darling-mouse, I made  _sure_.”

Her cheeks flush again, and she turns, searching for something. Anything. And she finds a brush Tink once gave her, told her never to use because she didn’t need to use it, and hurls it at him. Of course, he dodges it easily, and of course, he laughs, with his head thrown back.

"Out!" she seethes, going over to him, shooing him towards the door, "out, out, out!"

"But, bird," he says, looking over his shoulder at her as he goes towards the exit, pretending that she really is pushing him out, "I’ve seen you - "

“ _Out!”_ she screeches, slamming it after him, huffing for a good few, long seconds before reluctantly turning back to the dresser, where the clothes he gave her still lay. _  
_

No doubt about it, he’ll probably ruin  _those_  too.


	15. If He Had Let You Go, the Sun Would Have Ben Gone (originally posted on Nov. 23rd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "prompt where wendy kisses peter to redeem him but he stays young and realizes that they're meant2be" (via balancingindifference)

The words are out of Peter’s mouth before he can really think this through. The words are dipped in poison and have now been spat out onto the ground for all the world to see, including his darling little bird, who’s mouth is hanging open, and her eyes are wide. So wide, he thinks, he can see a light go out in them, and something within him  _snaps_.

(Again.)

He wishes he could take them back, reign them in, undo what he’s just done, inside this cave, that’s in the shape of a skull, in front of an hourglass that tells him how long he’s got till he is turned into dust, because it honestly hasn’t been that long since he tricked that old man’s son into thinking he was his father ( _foolish child_ ), and he’s got  _time_ , but this is important, this is  _so, so important_. She knows it.

(Words are things he wishes he could take back right now.)

But the words have hit her, with full force, and the poison is sinking in, and he can see the color draining from her face, till only a sickly pallor remains. Something inside him screams,  _screeches_ , shouts out for the shocked ( _hurt_ ) expression that’s making her look like she’s been yanked out of some place nice, and tossed away, to some place where she’s never been, never wanted to go in the first place.

(The opposite has happened, though.)

"But, Peter," she tries, but words, words that are armed to the teeth with knives sharpened with a burning hatred and swords bathed in blood that’s been boiling her veins (from the taunts, from the teasing, from having to endure Neverland, from having to exist on the same island with  _Peter Pan_ ), words that could  _cut_  him and  _hurt_  him like he’s hurting her,  _die_  softly on her lips, like a sweet surrender.

(A surrender he’s never quite wanted to see.)

Four decades of being on the island have built up walls around her once frail heart, and he’s sure that he’s succeeded in blackening it around the edges (he’s proud that she’s a wild, wild thing now) a bit, but he can still see the shine of tears in her eyes, because she doesn’t want to be a part of this, a part of finding the truest believer (so much pain to come, she tells him). The tears in her eyes are tears he knows  _he_  won’t see fall, and maybe, just maybe, she won’t  _ever_  let them.

(But if they don’t, then they’ll always be there, glassing over her eyes, and then she’ll be miserable, and he pretends not to care about this, about the venom running through her veins.)

Her shoulders slump a bit, and he’s about to open his mouth, a sneer already on his lips, because,  _is she really giving up?_ , but then, before he, or any of the Boys could blink (if they were even here, which their  _not_ ), can move, can  _breathe_ , she’s flung herself at him, ( _this is all his fault, all his fault_ ) with her entire body, and he’s stunned, because his first thought is  _is she really hugging me goodbye,_ but then there isn’t any thought at all, not for a good, few long seconds, because her mouth is on his, and something in his chest, under his ribs, in front of his spine,  _twists_ , without warning.

Her hands are on the tips of his shoulders, fingers splayed and digging harshly into his skin (he can still tell they’re shaking), and something  _happens_.

There is a cracking in his chest, sharp and painful. He has to step away, and clutch his chest, before something bursts, before this is a bright light, before he  _feels alive for the very first time_ , and he’s  _glowing_ , and the tears have left tracks down her face (he never noticed them fall, but he’s too stunned to be disappointed that she  _let_  them).

No. No, no,  _no_  -

"Peter!"

Alarm radiates from her form, which is tense, and crouched low to the ground, like she’s preparing to make a speedy getaway, but he feels  _amazing_  and it occurs to him that  _he never needed that believer’s heart_.

(It’s all because of his darling little Wendy-bird.)

He realizes he’s been lifted off the ground, that he’s above her, so he drops, feather-light, and she backs away from him, eyes wide and bright (re-lit?), but he doesn’t give her a chance to leave, a chance to remember the words (“ _I don’t want you anymore, Wendy-bird”_ ) he’s spat out, drenched in venom (poison) that’s still coursing through both their veins, he  _lunges at her_ , arms out,  _the greatest feeling_ propelling his crashing into her, crashing her into the cold, cold floor.

They are a tangle of legs and arms and fingers twisted in long, blonde hair. Laughter mixes with indignant, surprised sputters, and a skeletal arm tightens around the waist that’s covered in the fabric of yet another ruined nightgown (he’s always liked her better in dresses).

She tries to speak, tries to snarl at him, tries to kick and punch and screech for every ounce of hated that she possesses for him (even after each bite mark he’s left on her hipbones and every kiss he’s planted behind her ear, along her jaw, and across her throat),  _because he’s a horrible monster and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him_ , but she can’t,  _won’t fight_ , because he’s holding her close, with his mouth brushing her ear, with words, words that hold a possible antidote to the venom he spreads like a willing plague, tumble out his mouth, over his lips, and onto her skin, into her pores, and sinking into her bones.

( _He’s sorry, he means it, she’s done it, she has. Wendy-bird, Wendy-bird.)_

He makes sure she promises him, by the end of the night, that she will never, ever leave him.

Because she is the sun in his sky, and if she went, the sun would be gone, and then everything  _would_ be shrouded in darkness, like she thinks it always will be.

_(But she is the sun, his sun, and his sun is not gone. It’s the thing that saved him as a matter of fact.)_


	16. I Swear It Wasn’t An Accident (originally posted on Nov. 23rd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wendy gives Peter a "kiss" (via serendipityiris)

If you asked her, she’d tell you Peter had tripped her, somehow, and that’s how she ended up smushing her lips to his, squeaking while backing up, nearly falling over, before turning on her heel and making a run for it, with his laughter chasing her before his feet started to move.  
If you asked him, he’d tell you Wendy had simply tripped, rather clumsily, right into him, while he had happened to be walking past her, and that's why he'd smirked as soon as she had lost her balance.

No, no, he hadn’t tripped her at all.

If you saw them later, with her out of breath, with a scarlet face, with his arms wrapped around her middle as she struggled to escape, you would hear him teasing her about their kiss (about her kissing him). And then you would hear her protest (screech, quite loudly) about him tripping her so she could “kiss” him.

And if you fast-forwarded to about a year and a half later, you could see her running through the night with a scarlet face, with him calling after her, “My darling, clumsy Wendy-bird,” because they’re past placing blame on one another and are now only focusing on Wendy’s perfect (hilarious; he loves that shade of red stuck in her cheeks) reaction to when his lips crash into hers unexpectedly.


	17. There is a Ghost in Your Eyes (originally posted on Nov. 25th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "Neal notices the look on Wendy's face when she talks about peter and wonders what happened in all those years he's been gone." (via anonymous)

Neal should have known something was off when they left Neverland, left the defeated Pan, left the twisted, hopeless Lost Boys on the island. He knows she should’ve, but he hadn’t.

He really  _should_  have paid attention to the distant look in her eyes after Henry had gleefully, proudly, exclaimed that his mother(s) had defeated Pan. That they could  _all go home_ , if they hurried along fast enough

He should have realized that the shock that she wore like a second skin for the next long while afterwards was not a good thing, it was not a result of her finally beeing  _free_  of Neverland.

But nobody noticed, not until a few days after returning home, just how ill-adjusted and distraught she was over leaving Neverland. Henry once asked her about it, maybe about a week after leaving Neverland, while to explain to her what a burger was, why she always looked like she was about to cry, in that nice-Henry-way of his, that Neal definitely didn’t have in him.

She had stumbled a bit over her words, while Ruby had set a milkshake down in front of her (because, so far, Ruby has been very helpful in helping Wendy choose things like clothes - so odd here! - and food - even more so!) and left with a tight smile. Wendy’s never been one to try to lie, not until Neverland, Neal supposes, not til Pan had probably  _told_  her to lie, and her attempts now show how  _much_  she’s trying to cover up whatever truth Henry doesn’t know he’s asked after.

Eventually, whispers and quietly-voiced, reluctant truths start to tumble forth from her mouth, truths that make Henry’s eyes go wide and Neal’s heart twist in a painful way when she talks about Peter, and it occurs to him that they never really  _asked_  Wendy if she had wanted to leave the island. If she had wanted to leave  _Pan_  behind.

He remembers how furious Pan was, when Emma had told him,  _"we’re taking her and Tinker Bell … home,"_ (the word must’ve scorched her mouth, for her to call this town  _home_ ), when he had been powerless to stop them from tugging Wendy away from him, from the ruins of the game he’d been convinced he would win. He remembers  _now_  how her eyes had pleaded that they let her say, but her voice had been snatched away. By Regina, who did not trust her, and Pan had called  _after_  her, his voice strained, somewhat -

Henry looks like he’s just realized this, too. Because he’s holding Wendy’s hand and patting her shoulder and telling her that if Pan had become a “good guy” they would have let him come, too (which Neal knows Emma would never allow, but says nothing). He tells her that Peter must have really,  _really_ liked her in order for him to want her to stay on the island.

And Neal wishes he couldn’t see the detached ( _haunted_ _, because there are ghosts in her eyes_ ) look on Wendy’s face when she wishes dejectedly into her hand,

_"I miss Peter."_


	18. What Do You Mean, “We’re in a Movie”? (originally posted on Nov. 25th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wendy and Peter are in Storybrooke and are shown the original peter pan disney movie" (via anonymous)

Henry is waving around a DVD case excitedly, with a smirking Emma and Regina standing by the doorway. Neal’s laughter can be heard from somewhere far off, but Wendy and Peter only sit on the couch, fingers entwined, look perplexed. So far, the Mills-slash-Charmings-slash-Swan family is doing a pretty good job of explaining “modern technology” (a term that still gives Wendy a baffled expression, which Peter likes to laugh), but the looks on their faces doesn’t bode well with him.

Tink is off somewhere with Ruby, he remembers Wendy telling him, so she can’t sit through this with them (she’d told them that she would never look at the  _great Pan_ ever again after seeing that movie, which made his lips twist into a suspicous frown, one that his Wendy-bird had rolled her eyes at because  _this couldn’t be that bad, right?_ ).

He reassures Wendy by digging his fingernails into her skin, which she squeaks (un-noticeably) at, because, honestly, how bad could this possibly be? How bad is  _Disney_ , anyway? They might as well give it a chance, he thinks, they just might have done something right. Maybe. He’s doubtful, because the grown ups have cleared the area, and it’s just him, Wendy, Henry, and these two other kids named Hansel and Gretel came in at the very last minute, so it can’t be all that bad.

Right?


	19. He’ll Let You Sink, but Never Drown (originally posted on Nov. 26th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "prompt for darling pan fic/drabble: "swimming lessons" can be smutty" (via Anonymous)

When she tells him she has no idea how to swim, after a day of the Lost Boys dangling her above the lagoons where the mermaids croon at her (for Peter), wanting to tear her apart. And when she tells him, it’s not because she came running (crying and shaking) to him because the Lost Boys were having their  _fun_ , oh, no. It’s because Pan had overheard the Lost Boys laughing  _oh, so hysterically_  about it one mid-morning, where the sky was overcast and the air was just a bit cooler than usual.

He’d heard them, realized Wendy was nowhere to be found near the campsite, and she wasn’t with Tink, because Tink was busy  _yelling_  at them for their torturing  _the poor girl_ , and so he’d finally found her, far, far away from his Boys, from Tink, from the camp, from the lagoons (from him, him, him). She was shaking, she was trying her best to dry her eyes while muttering foul things under her breath. She was curled into the bark of the thick base of a tree that seemed to hang over her gloomily, shading her from the sky’s bleak color (because her eyes were red and her fists were clenched and she looked so  _angry, angry, angry_ ).

When she tells him what’s made her  _cry_ , it’s because he’d caged her in, between the bark and his body (his hands are  _cold, cold, cold_ ), it’s because he’d put his face so close to hers, so close that his breath had sent goose bumps racing up and down her arms when it had ghosted across her skin. When she tells him why she’s hidden herself away from camp, from Tink ( _he’s not happy about her hiding away from **him**_ ), he laughs at her. (Because she ought to be used to this by now.)

She doesn’t cry, like he expects. Instead, a hand is clawing at his chest, pushing,  _shoving_ , and her feet are suddenly kicking, and he  _laughs_  at his darling little Wendy-bird, and he thinks this is all  _hilarious_ , because she cannot  _kick him away_ , she cannot  _free_  herself from the cage he’s built up with his wicked bones, flesh pulled taught around his skeleton, with his long fingers, that are gripping her wrists, while his eyes bore into hers. A smirk is on her face.

When he begins to drag her off the ground and in a direction she’s not paying attention to, she still fights back. She’s not some broken thing, not yet, even though she’s been here for about forty years (he hates that she keeps track when he wants her to stay  _forever_ ), and since she’s not, he figures that he might be able to help ( _ha!_ _)_ with her not being able to swim.

(This will be fun, won’t it?)

She’s still shrieking at him by the time he reaches the pools, the deep, icy ones where the mermaids aren’t in, and he figures that this is one of the nicest things he’ll ever do for her.

(He thinks this as he tosses her into the pool, and her screams are muffled by the giant splash of water she makes.)

She comes clamoring up to the surface, limbs flying, and she’s spitting curses at him, spitting threats she’ll never be able to carry out right at his heart, and all he can do is crouch with his hands on his knees and laugh as he watches her swallow a mouthful of water.

This is funny for all of five seconds before he tells her to swim to the edge and cling for all she is worth, and she does this, quite horridly, but still does it. She’s shrieking and shaking and shivering, but she’s not crying anymore (her eyes aren’t puffy, but she looks like she’s seeing red), and her snarls make his heart feel light, like its got the wings of a bird.

( _Wendy-bird, Wendy-bird cannot swim!_ )

He tells her she needs to know how to swim, and she yells back that, in London, no one’s ever pushed her into a  _body of water_  before, so, she hasn’t actually needed to know how to  _swim_. He tells her that most of the Boys do, though they’re bad at it, and, if she wants to survive any more pranks (what fun they must be, for the Lost Boys, he thinks idly), she’s going to have to  _trust_  him.

(He’s making a mockery of the word, though, and she can see it. But she takes his hand when he leans down with his fingers stretched out towards her, a dangerous dance in his eyes as he yanks her soaked body out of the glistening pool.)

By the time late afternoon rolls around, there are bite marks all over her body, her limbs are shaky, and he’s never felt better. By the time she stumbles back to Tink’s place, she can no longer hear his voice (his whispers of her name, his groans) in her ears, and she thinks of the bruise she managed to place on the left lower side of his ribs, to return to the snide remark he’d made about how slow a learner she is when it comes to swimming.

The next day, when he tells her he’s going to test her abilities in the water, to see if she can  _save_ herself, she simply glares at him and buries her face back into the bed he’d made for her when she had first been brought to the island.

(She’s not about to tell him that the only reason he really wants her out there is because he just wants another excuse to smirk at her.)

Oh, but he doesn’t give up, because he just can’t get enough of his little bird (especially when she sees red).


	20. What Do You Mean, “We’re in a Movie”? (Part II) (originally posted on Nov. 26th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "prompt: wendy, pan, and hook (and anyone else) watch peter pan(2003) (with reactions??) :)" (via anonymous)

Peter blinks, eyes trained on the screen, and yet, they’re unfocused. His mouth forms words, but their incredulity falls on deaf ears, because Wendy’s hands are slapped over her reddened face (she’s laughing so hard she’s wheezing), whilst Hansel and Gretel tease Peter.

Relentlessly.

And Henry? He’s laughing, too. He asks what he thought, what Peter thought about the movie, and Peter blanches.

"That - That was - "

"He’s gunna explode," Hansel says gleefully.

Peter looks at Wendy for help, but she’s got her face buried in the cushions of the couch.

How come he’s the only one who thinks this is mutiny? An abomination?

They hadn’t gotten anything right! It was ridiculous!

(Despite these opinions, Wendy’s still laughing till she has to grip his wrist in order to remind herself that she ‘s not going to die of laughter before Peter can drag her off somewhere and make her promise that she will never tell a soul that he watched that. But then again, that movie explains why some of the town’s people have been giving him strange looks.)


	21. You Sneaked Into Her Heart Like You Did Her Window (originally posted on Nov. 26th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> prompt: "Greedy for more prompts since you're so generous! More badboy/goodgirl!AU please: Mr. Darling forbids his baby girl to see every dad's worst nightmare: teen ruffian suitor. That doesn't stop Pan sneaking in Wendy's bedroom window left open at night." (via michemistic)

Wendy lies awake, staring up at the ceiling of her room, clutching the blankets to her chin. She still remembers her mother’s ‘what-can-you-do’ shrug when her father told her that she wasn’t allowed a suitor, not till much, much later, when the boys of the families they knew were grown ( _matured_ , is what her mother said her father meant) and ready to find someone to have tea with.

Her father tells her, more often than naught, that she should find someone suitable. Someone who is stable (financially and socially, because  _her_ family is). Someone who is  _presentable_. Maybe dashing (definitely charming). Definitely  _not_  who is on her mind half of the time (okay, so, like 99% of the time). Mr Darling says that one day, someone  _good_  and respectable will court her (ha!), nothing like the “ruffians”  _(she likes the boys across town, though - they’re not anything like anyone she’s supposed to know)_ who live on the edges of her neighborhood, in the heart of London.

Her father should know that it’s kind of pointless to tell her this, because a) she doesn’t even remotely  _like_  any of the boys of the fathers her own parents are friends with, and, b), she kind of … well … er -

She hears a soft  _thump!_ and she bolts upright, her spine stiff, her body tingling with an urge to get out of bed and run for her (closed) door, long flowy nightgown be damned. Her eyes find a familiar outline of a tall, lanky (skeletal) boy and a flash of guilt stings her, inside the hollow of her chest, right next to her heart, because she can’t help thinking what her father would say if he knew that she’d fallen for a devil in a teenager boy’s body.

This boy is not a good boy, not a respectable boy, she reminds herself as he quietly (soundlessly, just about) makes his way over to her bed. Without hesitation, he lets his body fall heavily onto the mattress, face first in her sheets. She smiles, and lies back down, slowly, feeling her cheeks warm, because she is a  _stupid, stupid girl._ (Mostly, anyway.)

No, this person seems hardly human at all, sometimes. He can be mean, terribly so. He’s too young for the games he plays, he dances waltzes that she’s not prepare for (but oh, he’s good at sweeping her off her feet, isn’t he?), and she knows he’s not any good. Not actually  _good_ , as in a decent person kind of good, but …

The kind of good her  _mother_  knows. Not the kind Mr Darling wants for her, not the kind that’s shallow and self-securing, but the kind that Mrs Darling wants for her little (teenage!) girl.

But Wendy knows, as he crawls toward her with a sharp smirk on his face, that that kind of good does not flow through his veins. It does not pump through his heart, it is not a part of his blood. No, he’s everything that good is not.

He ends up with his head resting on her belly, using it as a pillow, while his fingers snake between hers, while he whispers softly  _"my Wendy-bird,_ " into the fabric of her nightgown (when did the sheets come down? had he pulled them away from her chin?), and all she can think about is the boy who’s not sleeping, but simply breaking so many rules (codes, rules, expectations) by resting his head on her stomach. _  
_

_He’s not good, but she’s not asking him to be._


	22. Even When [were] We Cursed (originally posted on Nov. 27th, 2013)

They don’t know each other during the curse. They don’t, they don’t, they don’t. Not really, not how they did  _before_. She had been a mousy thing even under a spell, and he had been a cruel  _mess_  ( _no_  curse can hide his true self) of a teenage boy, but they had not been Wendy Darling and Peter Pan. No, they’d had different names, different backgrounds, different  _worlds_ , and it’s maddening, to think that Peter couldn’t have been changed into something as nice as  _unicorn_  (or something of equal pleasantness) under the curse.

No, he had been all teeth and claws, all cruel and twisting words. And she had been meek, she had been  _scared_ , not of  _him_ , but of his words. Mannerisms. The way he was sometimes.

When the curse is still upon them, Peter (not his name, wasn’t his name then) had liked to bother her. Stole her books, yanked out the scrunchies and pins that kept her hair from falling into her eyes. He liked stepping on her papers, playing keep-away with classroom items when he happened upon her doing homework in the library (where nobody but her went to).

During the curse, they both wear jeans. She wears purple, baggy sweaters that are actually really soft and warm even though they look all scratchy and woolly (he stole one once), and he wears black jackets that just might be leather. He’s not a delinquent, and she’s not a goody-two-shoes. She’s just a better person, and he’s the worst sort of boy she’s ever known (thinks she hates him, hates him, hates him).

When the curse lifts, the first thing Wendy does is do her best not to cry, because she’s not sure why everyone else is so happy. She finds a quiet corner, away from the other townspeople, and sits, with her knees tucked into her chest, with her hands over her eyes as the memories  _just lock into place_ , all at once. Over time, regaining them would have been nice. _  
_

But all at once,  _all at once_ , made her want to retch, made her want to  _sob_  till she couldn’t breathe anymore (till there was nothing left in her lungs because  _it was too much)_. And she doesn’t even want to even begin to   _think_  about Neverland, and how she ended up here, and where Peter might -

_it’s all too much, all at once._

When the curse lifts, the first thing Peter does is try to not kill anyone on sight. He’s not exactly happy, you know, about being turned into someone  _other_  than the great Peter Pan, king of Neverland. Regina is going to pay, he thinks, and, standing in the middle of the street, he thinks he’s going to go after her, like everyone else is probably about to do (he was born from the roots of that island, he wants to go  _home_ ), but then, but then he  _remembers_.

**_Wendy-bird._ **

He rushes off to find her. The rush of memories, it doesn’t really bother him. Sure, his skull aches, he wants to vomit on the Evil Queen’s shoes ( _he_  is a King, and because of this he sneers, because even when she had a crown, back where she came from, he was a  _king_ ), but he’s got to find Wendy, Wendy, Wendy.

He has trouble finding her, but when he does, the sun has sunk in the sky and the sound of uneven breathing is loud in the silence of the part of town that he’s in. He’s near the part that leads into the woods, where all the nooks and crannies are (his cursed self liked to hide her things here), and he calls out to her, but not in the way that he should (the way that he  _does_ ).

His voice is strained. Dark. It has an edge.

He waits for a response, hears nothing, and then calls out again, and this time, he gets an answer (so quiet, but an answer still).

“ _Peter_?”

The voice is small and broken and  _scared_ and he can’t really blame himself (traitorous body of his, though) for rushing around a corner, and peering under a heap of junk. His eyes find curls pulled back by a familiar green-and-pink scrunchie (he likes to steal that one best). Her eyes are wet, but her nose isn’t red. Her arms are wrapped around herself and she looks very, very ill.

"Wendy," he breathes, cruelty gone, for only this once, and he extends his arms out to her, and his heart beats a little bit slower when she crawls out to him, when she buries her head in his chest and allows him to cage her in with his arms. He feels a little less nauseous, knowing that she’s here, knowing that she had to go through this with him, but he kind of wants Regina to suffer for making his darling-bird tremble so much as she does now.

It’s like she’s cold, trapped in a cage of warmth and skin and bones, ones that she’s grown used to, one that she’s tried running away from, over the years, but he decides that Regina can wait, because his Wendy-bird is actually letting him hold her, and he feels  _exhausted,_ like he hasn’t walked the Earth for ages.

He allows himself to hold her. To whisper things into her hair. He allows himself  _that_ much, because it feels good. Feels  _right_. Makes his bones feel a little better, for some reason. _(Not in love, not in love, well, okay. Maybe just a little.)_

(It’s been  _too_  long since he held his Wendy-bird.)


	23. Sometimes, There are Good Days (originally posted on Nov. 27th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Um, may I request any other thing ever that is Darling Pan (maybe a sweet little kiss, yeah?) Also, could you pretty, pretty please do a drabble on Dramione. I'd love to see one where they both end up in the room of requirement for similar reasons :) PRETTY PLEASE" (via anonymous)

On the days that Peter is nice to Wendy (which are few and far between, something Wendy knows all too well), she can see that the fire (ever burning) in his eyes has become lessened, somewhat. There is less cruelty in his boyish face, in the rigidness of his spine. Fewer screams of the Lost Boys can be heard on good days.

On good days, the fire is still there, though, and on those days, she does her best to stay far, far away from him, because there’s a chance that her tendency to anger him, even when he is in one of the best of moods (if there is such a thing as a  _best mood_  when it comes to the dear Pan), but he always ends up finding her anyway.

_(he does, he does, he does.)_

It’s usually when she is by one of the abandoned pools, where the mermaids are not, with her feet soaking in the cool water. It’s usually when her hair is pulled away from her face by something the Pan made for her (out of kindness?  _maybe_ ), when she’s humming soft lullabies that no one on the island has ever heard before, lullabies that she used to sing to her brothers when sleep did not come to them easily. (Lullabies that her mother taught to her and only her, lullabies that made her heart feel a little less strung out on days where Pan was not  _tolerable_.)

On good days, the fire in his eyes seems to burn brighter when he spots her, smiling down at the ripples her feet make in the water. He likes to come up behind her, wrap his arms around her waist (likes to put his hands on her hips, till she bats them away, in a half-hearted attempt to last more than a few days without new bite marks forming on her body), stand, and spin her about.

On those days, she is reminded of how she was taught to dance, and how she used to dance. She knows Peter knows nothing of it, but sometimes, when he spins her about like this, when he tosses her up into the air, with her (happy) shouts ringing through the air, when he  _catches_  her with a laugh bubbling forth from his throat - she wonders if he would be good at dancing.

Fire is in his eyes, on days like these. It burns steadily, like a well-fed forest fire that hasn’t spread over the land just yet, and on these days, she doesn’t try to put it out with the ice she tries to keep around her heart (flowing through her veins).

On good days, she lets the fire burn. Because it cannot be put out. And his truly boyish smiles does thing to her heart when his mouth swoops down on hers. When lips trail down her jaw, to her throat, to where the collar of her dress is being pulled away, she can forget. Forget that the fire will always be burning bright (because no one can put it out).


	24. Though Things Have Changed, You Still Adore Me So (originally posted on Nov. 27th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Prompt: cursed wendy is obsessed with all things peter pan and pan teases her all the time about it afterwards" (via anonymous)

_"Wendy_ , why do you  _deny_  it?”

Peter laughs, looking away from his mug of cocoa on the counter of Granny’s to give the flushed girl a smug smirk. She’s sputtering, her grip is so tight on her book that that her knuckles have paled in comparison to the rest of her skin, and her eyes are alight wit something akin to embarrassment.

This is probably the best part of the curse (waking up, waking up and remembering  _Wendy_ ), seeing her try to cover up what they  _both_  remember so well.

"I - I don’t want to talk about it," she says, not looking at him, staring intently at the book that she’s holding close to her chest.

"Why not?"

"I was  _cursed_ ,” she says, head whipping to the side so she could look at him. Her hair is in disarray (stupid girl had tried to run from him as soon as she saw him; the games starts so  _early_ , didn’t they?), her eyes are still bright, and she looks shaky (he knows she retched behind the hardware store because of the sheer  _force_ of everything coming back to her, and since the color is slowly draining from her cheeks, he can see her sickly pallor. (He’s worried, even when he smirks.) “Do we want to talk about  _you_? How you were, when we were  _cursed?”_

His eyes flash, but he throws back his head. A laugh tumbles forth.

"But, darling, you  _adored_  me so!”

She grumbles something under his breath, and he leans towards her. Lifts his finger. Wraps a loose curl around it, and tugs. Gently, but it moves her head in the slightest of ways.

(He can hear her grinding her teeth in discomfort.)

"What was that, bird?"

She scowls at him, and ducks her head, but he tugs on the curl around his finger, and she hisses at him.

Oh, how he’s  _missed this_.

"Nothing," she mutters, peaking up at him. Not timidly. Just in the way that a mouse would peak at the cat who holds it between its jaws, waiting for the bite to come. Then her head snaps up, and she looks flustered as words begin to fly from her mouth.

"It’s just - it had to be because of - you know!" Her hands flounder, and he thinks it’s adorable. "You already  _know_  how I feel, and you saw how the Charmings were, even  _before_  they remembered who they were. They somehow  _knew_ , even if they didn’t know it themselves. It’s just - that  _version_  of me worshipped you!” She sputters a bit, and he hooks his ankle around the leg of her stool, and  _tugs. her. closer._

"And - and you barely even  _changed_. So, you could be decent sometimes, and you didn’t play  _games_  - “

His mouth swoops down on hers, to get her to shut up.

Squeaking into his mouth, she pulls away, smacking her hands over her eyes and moaning in defeat, which makes him laugh. Even though her hands cover her face, her cheeks are burnt scarlet again. Sickly pallor, gone.

(Gone because he  _made_  it go.)


	25. Walk With Her (originally posted on Nov. 29th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "curse!AU darling pan prompt: walking together after school." (via anonymous)

She is used to walking home from school by herself. A lot of kids ride the bus, others get rides home. Not many walk, and no one but her walks by themselves.

It’s not a major thing, to her. No, it’s been happening for as long as she can remember. And she doesn’t mind, not really (liar, liar). She’s  _used_  to it, used to walking ( _being_ ) alone.

The walks home are usually either very nice or not very nice. There is no in between, no middle ground, because it’s either stormy (rain, wind, thunder, she hates it all) or really nice (overcast, light breeze, calm air).

Today, it’s the calm before the storm. Clouds have rolled in from the waters and have settled, quite menacingly, over Storybrooke, and the scented promise of rain on the wind and thunder int he air makes her walk a little faster, towards home, as the day slowly draws to a close.

She’s about four or five blocks away from her house (she lives near the the edge of the town, where the beach and the woods meet) when she hears her name being called from somewhere far behind her.

She stops, and turns, her expression a mask of confusion as her eyes settle on the figure hurrying towards her. She squints, trying to make out who it, who could  _possibly_  be wanting to talk to her after sch -

Her eyes widen as the figure run closer, and his features become clear.

_Oh …_

She briefly considers running, but, for the life of her, she can’t seem to get her firmly planted, boot-clad feet off the ground, so she has nothing to do but wait, trying to ignore the knots twisting in her stomach, reminding her that she should  _run, run, run_.

But he’s in front of her, and he’s grinning, all teeth and bright eyes, and before she can breathe a word to him there are hands around her waist and her world is being tilted backwards and -

_"Hey!"_

He’s laughing, spinning her around, and she tries to step away, but she stumbles, and he’s right there to catch her. Well, he doesn’t catch her, but he doesn’t let her hit the pavement.

Instead, she collides with him, face buried in his shoulder, and she squeaks, her eyes wide and her cheeks turning his favorite shade of scarlet as she struggles away from him. He lets her out of the cage of his arms (the cage of skin and blood and bones that she’s grown so used to), and he looks half-wild, with how his eyes are dancing, how his clothes are rumpled from snatching her.

"You - you," she tries to form a coherent sentence, but her cheeks and the tips of her ears are so hot she wonders if they’re  _burning_ , and all he’s doing is (mocking) patiently waiting for her to get something he can understand past her shaky lips.

When that’s all she can manage, he grins, and suddenly, an arm is slung round her waist, and they’re moving (how can he get her feet to move when she was sure they’d been stuck to the ground?), and he’s laughing at her, saying, “yes, me,” and she tries to get away from him, she really does, but his arms are a cage and his body is an addiction that she’s been trying so hard to get clean from (don’t remember don’t remember  _don’t remember_ ).

"What’s the  _matter_ ,” he says (not asks), halting so his arms can go around her, trapping her for just a moment, and when he presses his lips to the bit of skin her shirt doesn’t cover on her neck, she  _remembers_ , and she protests, loudly,so he lets her go (laughing) and lets her go (storm) off, but only for a few moments.

"Don’t tell me your mad," he tells her, his lips twisted up into a pout, his fingers skimming along her sleeve-clad arm, and she skirts away from him. Her boots are making prints in the sand now, she’s had to veer off the  _sidewalk_  for him.

But his words ring in her ears and she stops, eyes wary, and she says, “I’m not mad,” before she begins walking (hoping he won’t follow her home because if he does she’ll never be able to get him to leave  _and her resolve might be gone by then_ ).

"Oh, good!" he chortles, and hands are on her waist, sliding down her hips, and she freezes.

"I said I can’t - " she tries, her voice strained.

"I know what you said," his voice is in her ear now, sending shivers down her spine (the syllables  _crawl_ down her spinal cord). “I know exactly what you said.”

"So - "

"You didn’t mean it," his voice is serious now. Firm.

"Yes, I did -"

( _liar, liar, liar._ )

"No, you  _didn’t_ ,” he says. His voice has grown lower, quieter (desperate? no, no, never that).

She swallows, hard.

"If you meant it," he says, his arms sliding away from her, stepping away from her (no, no,  _stay_ ), “you can leave.”

She turns her head to look at him. “Right now,” he shrugs, unsmiling, eyes sharp, cheeks slightly flush. A ghost of a sneer haunts him behind his eyes, and she begins to step backwards, away (can’t let him near her, not again,  _no, no, no_ ), but then she stops, when she sees something in his eyes snap. Change.  _Shift_.

She stays where she is, eyes locked with his, unmoving.

For a few more seconds, they stand there.

And then he  _grins_ , and his grin is  _wild. Feral._

(stupid of her.)

"I win," he whispers, and arms are suddenly around her, lips are on her neck, and he’s moving them towards her home (always empty house), and her cheeks are flushed.

She feels a bit defeated, even though she weakly protests against his wiry arms and triumphant smirk.

_Liar, liar_. She couldn’t have said  _no_ , like she was supposed to.

But she’s let him  _near,_ and she knows he will never leave.

It was safer to be walking home alone. Safer, away from boys who are wolves with teeth and claws and words that crawl all over her skin and  _bury_  themselves in her  _bones (in her heart)._


	26. Dance With Me (originally posted on Nov. 29th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wendy shows Peter how to ballroom dance" (via anonymous)

"No, no," she says, smiling, despite his frown and furrowed brows (and dangerous  eyes), while her hands automatically go to correct his position. "Back straight, arms like this."

She puts his hand on her waist.

He grins.

She slips her fingers through his other one, and holds it up in the air. She straightens her back, and he does the same. (She hates that he’s taller than her.)

Wendy calls out the moves allowed. She makes sure she’s using his moves, not hers, so he can better grasp it.

"Box step," she tells him, moving their feet accordingly.

He makes a face. “This is … ” he searches for the right word. “ _Grown-up like.”_

At his disdain, she grins (smugly) and tells him she was no grown up, that she had learned to dance when she was very, very small.

"You’re supposed to lead now," she tells him, after a few minutes of doing quarter-turns and spins.

Something in his eyes lights up, and she tries to step away from him, but his hold on her is strong.

"I’ll find us some pixie dust," he says, smirking at the frantic  _no, no, no_ her lips are forming, but voice isn’t speaking. He’s gone, his warmth absent, and she stands there, dumbfounded as the trees around her rustle their leaves (Like they agree with him!).

Wendy doesn’t want to be danced about in the  _air_. She can already feel it now, the way her body will be tossed about and spun in the air, and she doesn’t want to do that, not today.

So she starts to  _run_. She should’ve  **known**  that teaching him was a bad idea.

(Worst idea she’s had yet, in her thirty years on the island.)


	27. Try to Make it Better (originally posted on Nov. 29th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can you please do a fanfic on how Peter sees Wendy hurt and she's crying and how he cares for her?" (via anonymous)

When Peter finds her curled against the bark of the tree, with wet, puffy eyes, and her snapped wrist against his chest, his smirk vanishes. His good mood dissipates into something much, much less boyish.

(He doesn’t even try to shove aside the foreign feeling that settles into the blood that pumps though his blackened heart as he approaches her.)

"Bird," he murmurs, voice soft, and her head snaps upwards to look at him. There aren’t any tear tracks on her face (nearly-wild girl’s not crying much anymore), but her puffy eyes and bloodied lips (she bites them when she’s trying not to cry) tell him that her wrist, which is bent at a grotesque angle, has definitely snapped.

"Bird, darling," she looks up at him, red, chapped lips thinned out into a line, and seems to try to curl into herself as he falls soundlessly to his knees before her, barely giving her any space to breathe.

His fingers slowly reach out for her, grasp her arm near the elbow, and he brings it forward, trying to ignore how her face twists and her teeth snap together in an attempt not to make any noise.

His cold, long, bony fingers trail lightly up her air, until they graze the part where her wrist snapped, and she sucks in a breath. He’s not applying any pressure, he’s looking from it, to her, from her, to it, wondering what had happened. (Probably fell out of a  _tree_ , judging from the scream he’d heard earlier.)

He doesn’t ask, though, because her eyes are dark and scared and full of pain, so he begins murmuring  _"bird, Wendy-bird, I’ll make it all better,_ " as he lets magic seep through the pores of his fingers and into the wrist. She gasps, cringes, and tries to pull her wrist back, but the hand on her forearm tightens its grasp.

She ceases her squirming when her wrist suddenly snaps forward, with a violent, sickening  _crack!_ , and she screams, her other hand flying up to her mouth (too late, though).

Her breathing soon slows, and he lets his fingers, still buzzing with magic, slip away from her arm, and he watches her examine her healed wrist while he rests his elbows on his knees.

Wendy looks up at him, cheeks slightly flushed (from having King of Neverland heal her, probably, she doesn’t like accepting help from him, not  _ever_ ) and mumbles a nearly-inaudible “ _thank you,”_ but she doesn’t move from her spot on the ground.

Peter grins at her, and says, “ _Darling_ ,” and before she can squeak out a halfhearted protest arms are hauling her up and he’s tugging her by the wrist that hadn’t been snapped further into the jungle. “Were you trying to fly without me?”

She scowls. “How did you know I fell out of the tree?”

( _Knew it._ )

He tells her he knows everything that happens on Neverland, and he  _sees_  it, too - he’s seen  _her_  - 

"Shut up!" small fists assault his shoulders once they’ve wriggled out of his grasp, and he laughs, catching her wrist in in his hand once again, pulling her along, only thinking one, small (affectionate) thought while his mind races to think of  _anything_  other than that:

_Bird. Darling. little. Wendy-bird._


	28. Buried Things Will Manifest (originally posted on Nov. 30th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "When Peter realizes his shadow stalks Wendy he has a revelation." (calie1003)

His shadow follows her when she isn’t in his line of sight.

As soon as his morning-routine jeers are done and over with, along with the cruel laughter of the Lost Boys, she sets off into the jungle, feeling the Pan’s eyes burning into her back, more often than naught.

She can go for miles without knowing its there, or she can go for minutes. For however long it takes for her notice, her reaction usually goes two ways.

  1. She yells ( _screams_ ) at it to go away, cursing and waving her arms around, because  _stalking_  is not what she expected in Neverland, and “ _if Peter wants to keep an eye on_  me _he can do it himself_!”
  2. She just  _runs_. (It doesn’t usually follow.)



Wendy is not exactly sure how long she goes without  _snapping_. (Maybe two, maybe three years, she doesn’t know.)

But when Wendy does, she  _screams_  at Peter, one night, once he’s chased her down, once he’s backed her into a tree with fingers painfully digging into her hips and a feral grin, and when she  _screams_ at him, for his  _stupid, annoying, **childish**  stunt _wish his shadow, the first thing he does is yank her towards him, fingers digging into her skin through the long-ago ruined nightgown, and slam her back against the tree, to get her to  _shut. up._

“ _What_  did you say?” his words are twisted by the snarl that accompanies the syllables that come tumbling out of his mouth. He looks  _furious_ , but  _she’s_  the one who’s the angrier one of the two.

"I called it stupid and childish," she says, once there is air back into her lungs, once she can  _continue screaming at him_ (because this despicable, immortalized  _boy_  deserves it all and  _more_ ), “because you,  _Peter. Pan._ need to  _grow_  up before I - “

“ _No_ ,” he shakes her, hard, and he hears her skull crack against the tree, but she doesn’t seem affected by it. “That’s not what I - “

Her lips twist into a sneer as she busies her body with trying to shove him  _off and away_ from her, and she shrieks at him, cutting him off ( _it’s his fault she’s this wild, this ferocious, **all his fault** , _he thinks, somewhere in one of the far corners of his mind), “your  _shadow_ , Pan! It’s that  _game_  you play with your  _shadow_  and it’s  _not_ \- “

Peter lets her go, abruptly, and she falls against the tree, and limbs cease to flail.

"Oh, don’t  _pretend_  you don’t  _know_ ,” she hisses, stepping forward. Puts a hand flat on his chest, right over where his heart is (is it even there?), and  _shoved_. He barely moves. Doesn’t follow her as she storms off.

He is left, staring at where she stood,  _astounded_ _._

He. can _not_.  _be **lieve**_ this.

It …

He sighs, turns abruptly on his heel, and begins to follow her, further into the jungle. He can just barely make out her form, stumbling through the foliage.

( _he should’ve known should’ve known it would have shown_. All that hard work,  _acting_  all the time and - and - his  _shadow_  had been the one to give himself away. He doubts that Wendy knows he has - but - oh, he should’ve  _known_.)


	29. Losing Should Feel Worse Than This (originally posted on Nov. 30th, 2013)

Once they’d managed to get Rumpel out of the blasted box, after they’d all found out that he’d  _killed_  the imp’s father - once  _every. single. thing._ had turned out the way Henry’s  _family_  had wanted it to, they had all come to an agreement, with him sitting next to a standing Prince, whose sword was always against the Pan’s jugular with Wendy snoozing a few feet away, her head resting on the wide-awake Tinker Bell’s shoulder.

"Peter Pan is going to grow up in Storybrooke?" Henry asks.

Emma says yes, with a promise of a possible death threat written in her eyes as she glances at the Pan.

Peter groans.Just because the  _savior_  had managed to save her son and everyone had beaten him at his own game, does  _not_  mean he’s thrilled about being in this town.

It’s not Neverland. He doesn’t have his Boys with him. He’s not allowed to be in the same vicinity as Felix. Mainly because Felix isn’t very nice, and he gets worse when he’s around his leader. (According to Henry.)

What’s even  _worse_  about this town is that  _everyone_  seems to be enjoying the punishment he’s getting. Since the magic of Neverland is going to wear off … in an undetermined amount of time, he knows that, if he doesn’t get back there soon after the magic has worn off completely, he  _will_  start to grow up.

He’s not  _supposed_ to grow up! He was  _born_  out of the island. His skeleton is made of the bones of Neverland’s core. His skin is as tough her the leaves of the jungle’s canopy, and his words are as sharp as the traps he sets when he was bored.

He was a  _king_ , and now - now -

He is sitting in Granny’s diner, with his head resting on his folded arms, because he has to be in a  _public_ place at all times because he isn’t  _trustworthy_.

He’s planning on just sitting like that till Ruby comes over (she always does) and tells him to move his arse because she does  _not_  want him in the diner  _twenty-four-seven_  but since this is the only thing that he gets, that will entertain him, he waits until someone threatens to toss him out.

This time, though, Ruby comes over and tells him that someone’s looking for him. There’s a hint of something in her voice that hasn’t identified and he doesn’t like, not in the slightest - so he doesn’t identify it and he grumbles something inaudible at her, which she only chuckles at. He hears her walk away, and hopes,  _really_   _hopes_ , that whoever it is  _isn’t_  Gold (the Dark One doesn’t scare him, it’s just that receiving death threats gets  _real old real fast)_ or Regina (some  _Queen_  she must be, still hated and distrusted among the townspeople). _  
_

He hears the  _thudding_  of boots, a kind he’s not familiar with, and so he lifts his head, expecting maybe Henry (the kid keeps reminding him about  _this_  world’s version of him and it’s  _maddening_  because he’s been forced to watch all the Peter Pan movies that are present in this land) or Belle (she threw a book at him as soon as Henry had shouted  _we have Peter Pan_ because apparently when grown-ups go off to fight immortal teenage boys (kings!) to get their grand-children it’s all his fault, apparently).

But what he sees makes him feel a little bit better (less homesick) about being in this town full of  _grown ups_ because his little darling dearest has stopped in front of his table.

She’s wearing a baggy, navy-blue sweatshit, a long skirt, and her noisy, old boots (that she probably borrowed from Ruby because Ruby  _adores_ Wendy even though Wendy is like a century and fourteen years old, give or take) are together on the tiled-floor.

"Bird," he says," leaning back in his seat, unsmiling.

"Peter," the smile she’d worn seconds ago begins to droop at the corners, and, if they were still in Neverland  _(if they were alone_ ), he either would have laughed at her or swooped in to make those cheeks tinge red and those corners of her rosy mouth turn  _up_ (he likes her best whens he smiles because of  _him_ ).

"Are you … "

As much as he wants to talk to her, he realizes he can’t say anything, not really, not  _here_ , because everyone would assume he’d be up to no good if they heard the words in his head (they wouldn’t be wrong), so he just tilts his head and nods it lightly towards the empty part of the booth across from him. She slips in, looking relieved.

Relieved?

_Did she think that he would send his favorite mouse away?_

"I heard they’re making you work in the library," she says, trying her best to smile, and he has to appreciate her effort, because she hasn’t spoken to him since he’d been forced off the  _Jolly Roger_.

The townspeople did and didn’t trust Wendy. Her brothers were more than happy to see her (and left because Pan was in town because  _who wants to be in the same town as him_ ). But as soon as they’d gone, comfort and distrust had been thrust in Wendy’s face. It was no secret that she did not  _hate_  him; but it was a secret that she did  _care_ , and that was something someone might not take to their liking. At all.

She’s been kept from him, he knows, hidden away. People have talked to her, given her clothes, talked to her. He thinks Ruby is the only one who is really there for her, though, and he tells himself that’s why he doesn’t snap at her like he does at everyone else.

"Yes, bird," he says, shrugging. "They have."

His words are telling her to leave, before someone gets the wrong impression (idea, because no one trusts him, especially around her, because Tink had apparently warned the Savior and the imp about  _how_  he is towards  _Wendy_ ), but she doesn’t.

Instead, she leans forward. “I could help you, you know,” she says, brightly. He’s never seen her this happy before. Happy. Is she? He wants to squint, to examine her, but doesn’t. Can’t.

"Don’t," he says.

She is now crestfallen.

"But I - "

“ _Mouse_ ,” he says, soothingly, trying not to hurt her too badly (okay  _yes_  he does  _care_  because this  _is_  Wendy), “it’s too soon.”

This doesn’t help.

"But  I -  _Peter_  …”

He opens his mouth, but then Ruby is there, giving him an evil-eye (right? that’s what they call it?), telling Wendy that she should go and see if she can’t help Tink with anything.

Wendy gets up without a word, and he is left to stare helplessly after her.

When she’s out the door he glares up at Ruby, who looks surprised at his soured mood.

And then she grins.

"You’ll live," she says, "and besides. Wendy’s going to sneak in anyway, so, be happy I’m not saying anything."

And when she walks away from him, towards the kitchen, and all he can do is try and wonder  _who_  - 

It was  _Tink_ , he realizes. It was  _Tink_  who’d talked to Ruby.

Why  _else_  would she be willing to let him spend time with his darling-bird?


	30. Asleep on My Shoulder (originally posted on Dec. 1st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "After a long chat, Peter fall asleep on Wendy" (via anonymous)

him  _off_  of her.

But that was hours ago.

Wendy is still sitting against the tree, legs tucked into her chest, with her chin resting on her knees. He hasn’t moved since she’d felt the weight of him on her body, and dawn must be coming soon, because she doesn’t want the Lost Boys to find her here. Them, or Felix.

Especially not Felix.

Wendy wants to shift, wants to move her limbs, but she has a feeling that if she woke Peter, she would have bruises that would last for weeks.

That, and/or he’d  _get very close_ to feeding her to the mermaids.

So she doesn’t move.


	31. Maybe, He Wanted Her (originally posted on Dec. 1st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "after receiving henry's heart, peter doesn't go to pixie woods at first. he instead takes a trip to the little home he built for wendy and seeks comfort there." (via amphitrites)

Wendy is gone when Peter arrives at the little house he built in the tree. He knows she is, but maybe, he half-expected he to be waiting for him. With eyes guarded, flat with hatred. But with hands that were willing to hold his on good days.

He looks around, saw that she left everything,  _everything_  behind, so she could be with them. Her brothers, Bae (what kind of name was Neal?), Emma. All of them. His power was all-consuming, it was  _amazing_ , but no smirk graced his lips as his fingers trailed along the surfaces of the house.

He pretends he cannot feel the hole in his heart, because she is gone.

He leaves, shortly after spending a few minutes trying to compose his features, trying to convince himself that he has what he  _wants_. No one can stop him, no one can do anything to him.

So  _why_  can’t he fill this hole inside his chest?


	32. Safe and Sound, it was Not (originally posted on Dec. 1st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Prompt! Peter gave Wendy the bottle of pixie dust from the last flower on the island for safe keeping" (via anonymous)

Wendy watches as Tink smiles down at her, walks away, leaves her to stare off into the distance with glazed-over eyes and a heavy heart. She’s trying so hard not to feel anything, anything at  _all_ , but that’s never worked for her.

Her hands are shakily clasped in front of her, she’s trying not to breathe to deeply, because she’s  _actually leaving Neverland_.

She remembers when she got it, when Peter had come to her, one night, with a smile on his face, but his eyes — his eyes were flat. Serious. She had been out wandering about, humming to herself in the jungle, muttering about the stupidity of certain Lost Boys, when he had appeared beside her, wrapped his fingers around a wrist, and had pressed something small, something  _cold_  into her other hand.

There is a whispered, “ _keep it safe_ ,” whispered against her ear, while she holds her breath, and then, he’s gone, and she stumbles backwards. Nearly collides with a tree.

He hadn’t mentioned it again, hadn’t brought it up, but neither had she.

Wendy remembers that, as her eyes try to focus, as she tries to be happy. She’s going to be free, be with her brothers. She’ll be  _free_ , have a family, have a  _life_  (how much has changed, anyway, in her old world?), but she can only stare off into the distance. The quiet, contented sounds of the Lost Boys (not Felix, never Felix) and the family fall on her deaf ears.

She didn’t keep it safe.

_Sorry, Peter._


	33. She’s Looking Straight at You (originally posted on Dec. 1st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Can you do one where Wendy goes and visits Henry without knowing he's Pan?" (via anonymous)

Wendy goes to the Captain’s Quarters, thankful that no one batted an eye at her request to go check on Peter, despite the commotion (whatever was that all about anyway?) that had happened a little while ago.

She  _had_  cared for him while his mothers had been away, trying to defeat Pan. She feels kind of sick (she wants to throw up, because of the anxiousness coiling inside of her stomach, knotting up her insides almost painfully), she finds, as she opens the door quietly and shuts it behind her. She feels like she can’t breathe. Like she can’t properly get  _air_  into her lungs.

Like she’s  _drowning_ , almost.

She sees Henry shift, and her heart does a painful lurch. She’s  _sad_  when she’s supposed to be happy, she should be  _rejoicing_  right now, but she can’t, so she  _won’t,_ and she calls out, “Henry?” softly, just in case he’s sleeping.

He slowly, sleepily, turns over, and when his eyes fall on her, a smile tugs at his lips, and he sits up, and says, “hi, Wendy!”

She smiles weakly back, and stands, feeling unsure, and alone (she wants to  _cry_  but then people would ask  _questions_  and she can’t have  _that_ , now, can she?), with her shaky hands clasped behind her back.

"H-how are you?" she asks, stepping forward. He looks better, she thinks. Healthier. Like he hadn’t had his heart ripped out earlier.

_(Don’t think about him don’t think about him because he’s gone gone gone.)_

"I feel better," he says, brightly, "what about you, Wendy?"

There’s something in the little boy’s voice. It makes her eyes narrow, if only by a fraction. She can’t identify it, can’t   _place_ what she’s just heard. It bothers her, like the cruel tremor in Pan’s voice does -  _used to used to used to_  - when she had gone too far with what barbs she could throw at him, with what words she had that would make him angry, angrier than she had ever seen him.

"I - I’m fine," she says. Her voice is a bit too rushed, a bit too shaky, and she hopes he chalks it up to her being  _free_  for the first time in a century, like everyone else has.

Well, she thinks, everyone but  _Felix_. Felix had given her some sort of look, one that makes her think (not hope not hope  _not hope)_ that Pan is still … undefeated.

Henry quirks an eyebrow at her. “Are you sure?” he asks. The note in his voice, the one that makes her want to  _run_ , is gone, so she pushes it to the back of her mind. Thinking it means nothing. (It will come to haunt her later, though.) “You don’t look … well.”

"I just - "

She stops herself. He can’t know. Nobody can  _know_. The Boys haven’t said anything. Felix hasn’t. Which means no one knows, and she doesn’t want them to.

They  _can’t_.

“‘You just’ what, Wendy?” Henry tilts his head at her.

He’s such a kind, good-hearted boy, she thinks. He really is Bae’s son.

She sighs, and shakes her head, trying to smile. Her false smile, the one that Peter received the most after he’d said something so cruel that it had made tears spring to her eyes. It has cracks in it, but Henry has never seen that smile.

So why do his eyes flicker, like they do? Not kindly, not knowingly, nothing of the sort.

There is a lump slowly building itself up in her throat, and she clears her throat.

If she doesn’t leave, she’s going to start crying. All she wanted was to check on this boy, and - and now she has to leave. Because he’s more ovberservan than the rest. And she doesn’t want to be figured out.

No, no,  _she can’t have that_.

"I have to go," she says, and her smile falls, and she’s out the door before Henry can call out for her.

When the door shuts, Henry’s (Peter’s, Peter’s, Peter’s) face twists, and he slumps over, resting his chin in the curve of his palm. His elbow rests on his knee.

So, the birdy  _does_  care.

She’s a liar, he thinks with a grin, she’s a  _dirty. rotten. wingless. liar_.

He remembers all the times she’d told him how happy she’d be if he’d vanished, if she never saw him  _ever again_ , and - and - 

He wishes, very much, that he could just  _tell_  her that it’s him. To see the look on her face, when he tells her  _he knows what she’s tried so hard to hide_. Despite everything -  _everything_.

But, he can’t.

(At least, not yet.)


	34. He Can’t Wait Long Enough for Her to Wake Up (originally posted on Dec. 1st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Still taking prompts? - Curse!AU. Where Peter isn't affected by the curse, just goes along with it, but wendy is under the curse. He often watches her, and both protects her and pick on her." (via anonymous)

Being in a cursed town was kind of a bore, at first. Now? Now, it’s kind of amusing.

Peter can tell that the imp isn’t affected by the curse. It’s in the way that he moves. Speaks. How he handles things, it is all so  _terribly_  obvious. But since  _he_  was never affected by it (being Pan can do wonders for you when you happened to be in the vicinity of a curse), the imp hasn’t picked up on the fact that Peter is not under the curse.

He knows  _exactly_  who he is.

But, alas,  _Wendy-bird does not_.

It’s a crying shame, to be honest, on some days. Some days, he goes up to her, walks with her, talks with her. She’s always unnerved when she sees him, and he can see ghosts in her eyes, ghosts that she can’t remember and he wishes that he  _could_ because he hasn’t chased her in  _ages_. She’s not different from who she was. She may not be Wendy, but the person she is now is not much different.

This one just doesn’t know who he is.

A few times, though, he’s glad she doesn’t know. Because he’s had to stick up for her, yank her out of a street when she had her nose buried in a book when a yellow car had been headed straight for her. He’s had to tell others to fuck off, before, because she is  _very_  teasable (but only  _he_  gets to tease her about  _anything_  because  _he_  is  _Peter Pan_  and she is his  _Wendy_ , even if she can’t remember).

If she wakes up one day, he’ll have to explain that to her. He’s already got answers planned out in his head, explanations that she won’t (hopefully) think to second guess.

Wendy-bird is fun to watch, fun to be around, because the things he says can make her turn scarlet. Can make her nearly suffocate from the lack of air in her lungs because she’s  _laughing so hard_.

But he dreads the day when she will wake up. Because he knows that every curse can be broken, and he has a feeling that it might happen soon.

She won’t be as fun to bother, but, oh, it will feel so  _good_  to grasp her hips again, to dig his fingers into her flesh. To spin her about, to laugh at her.

To  _chase_  her.


	35. Oh, You Shouldn’t Have Confessed to Him, Darling (originally posted on Dec. 2nd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "wendy confesses to "Henry" that she misses Neverland and even misses Pan, much to "Henry's" poorly concealed enjoyment" (via anonymous)

Peter is actually enjoying being ‘Henry’ more than he honestly should, pretending to be the son. Grandson. Friend. It’s all too amusing, and the fact that Felix now knows is even better. Makes it all  _so. much. better._

He doesn’t think about Wendy until he accidentally glances her way, and his eyes lock onto her back. Her hands are gripping the rail of the ship, knuckles bleeding white from her hold. He walks over to find out why, trying his best not to give himself away. He steps forward until he is directly beside her, and it seems like her skeleton nearly jumps out of her skin when she notices that he’s there. (He tries not to think about how she’s taller than him now.)

He tries his hardest not to smirk.

Instead, he smiles up at her, as Henry would do, and asks, “how’re you, Wendy? Excited that you’re finally free?”

Behind the smile, Pan is sneering. He doesn’t like that she’s  _leaving_. She  _belongs_  (to him, he tries not to think  _him him him_ ) in Neverland, with the Boys ( _traitors_ ), with Felix, with him. Not here. Not with these people -

He takes a good look at her face, and something clicks inside him. It’s not his body, but he knows what it means. Well, not  _exaclty,_ but -

"Henry?" her voice is quiet. He wonders if she’s upset, because she  _looks_  upset. For some reason. She should be dancing about with the others. She  _should_. But she isn’t.

_Why_.

"Yes, Wendy?"

It’s a struggle for Peter (Henry) not to add - _bird_  at the end of every ‘Wendy’, it is hard for him not to call her  _darling_  or  _mouse_  or  _dear_.

"I - can I tell you something?"

"Of course," he says. His eyes are alight, but not with the kindness he think she sees. He wants to  _know_ , so, when he wins, he can  _use_  this against her, just like everything  _else_  -

"Promise me you won’t tell the others."

Her voice wobbles. His senses have gone up. Her voice hasn’t  _wobbled_  (shaken. trembled.  _been unsteady_ ) for a long, long while.

"I promise," he says, doing his best to seem serious.

Wendy seems to buy his act, and so she continues on.

"I … I miss it."

"What?" His cruel, malicious glee is forgotten for just a second. He is genuinely curious now.

"I miss Neverland."

The bird is so quiet he’s not even sure he quite heard her right, but he doesn’t show anything on his face. Even though something in his chest is  _burning_  at her words.

( _Wendy, Wendy, Wendy-darling._ )

"You do?" he tries to keep the  _delight_  out of his voice. Because it means she lied. Because it means that all those bruises, bite marks, bloody lips, and kisses had  _meant something_  to her. Oh,  _he should have known_ , this is too good to be -

"Yes," she says. She sighs. Her voice is no longer wobbly. It’ just - just  _sad_ , and he suddenly wants to swoop her up into the air, catch her with his fingers  _digging into her hips_  because -

"I … I miss Pan, too."

He actually goes slack-jawed for a moment at this. But, as Henry, he recovers quickly and asks her why, again. Because, yes, it’s something Henry would do (definitely), and he also  _really_  wants to know.

"Surprise," she mumbles, and then, more clearly, tells him, her eyes glassy and distant, "I wasn’t always in the cage, you know." Her voice is barely above a whisper. "He … I miss him. Pan. Peter Pan."

He can’t help the smirk that spreads across his face.

(Looked like  _Christmas_ , she’d told him once, when he’d grinned at her, hugely, when she had agreed to go flying with him one night.)

He’s positively beaming, and he can’t  _wait_  to tell Felix. But, he has to pretend to be  _Henry_  for now. So, when she finally looks at him, after a long, heavy stretch of silence, he has wiped the smirk off his face entirely.

"You’re not …" her brows furrow.

He raises his eyebrows, and she shrugs.

"I don’t want to," she admits, sounding tired. So, so tired. "I don’t want to miss it, miss  _him_ , Henry, because he was - a - oh,”

Her head falls with a soft  _thud_  onto the rail of the ship, so Peter pats her shoulder, gives her a comforting look that she does not turn her head to see, and goes off, to keep on playing the role of the dearly beloved Henry.

It’s going to be hard, pretending, when he can  _barely_  keep himself from smirking. Yes, he thinks,  _very hard, indeed._


	36. You’ll Know It When You Hear Him (originally posted on Dec. 2nd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I found Wendy's sad expression and the fact that she had Pan's pixie dust from 3.01 really suspicious. Can I ask you to write something where she doesn't realise Pan is Henry until he signals it to her, like he did with Felix" (via anonymous)

Felix watches Wendy carefully when she thinks no one is looking, long after he’s been shoved onto this godforsaken ship, and shortly after Henry (Peter, Peter, Peter Pan always  _wins_ ) reveals himself to him. He’s waiting for Pan to tell her, to make that frown twist into something that’s not quite upside-down. Because if she thinks she’s actually _free_ , like the rest of them - well.It doesn’t happen until moments before they go through the portal, and back to  _their world_. Wendy has been shuffled and moved around by the family and the boys, who seem to mill around her. Maybe it’s because she tried to be a mother to them, all those years ago, for just one time. Maybe it’s because she’s the only one they know, even though they’d said and (and, perhaps  _done_ ) some terrible things to her, with Pan’s jeering laugh echoing about the jungle in the background.

Whatever the reason, she ends up closer to Felix. But even though her body is closer, he can see that her mind is somewhere far, far away. Back in Neverland, probably. She doesn’t speak many words to those who ask her if she’s okay, if she wants anything, if she  _needs_  anything, and Felix thinks that she just might be a little  _sad_  about leaving the island behind.

Even if she  _had_  been unceremoniously dropped out of the sky, on the beach. At Pan’s feet, all those years ago.

Henry wanders about, being friendly to everyone, maintaining his cover  _perfectly_. Felix doesn’t keep an eye on him, doesn’t need to, because  _the Pan never fails_. But he does, when Henry ( _Peter_ ) wanders over to the girl, casually, with a smile on his face, and she just  _barely_  smiles at him when he asks after her well-being.

It’s a telltale sign for Felix, and he  _knows_  that it’s  _more_  than that for Peter, and he watches, silently, as Henry leans towards her, just a little bit, and says something quiet. Something he can’t hear.

He doesn’t need to hear it.

Felix sees the color slowly drain from her face. Her hands fist the fabric of her gown, and she looks like she’s going to be sick. He thinks she just might be, when she swallows, noticeably, and he hears Henry ( _Peter_ ) murmur something to her. Again, he doesn’t catch it. But, again, he doesn’t need to. Henry’s hand rises and pats her shoulder, and when she scoots away from him, just  _barely_ , he hears him  _chuckle_.

Henry (Peter) leaves her standing by herself, staring intensely at nothing. He knows she’s trying to compose herself, trying to decide if she should tell the others, because  _Pan_  -

He whispers her name, and her head whips around. She looks nervous, very nervous, and he puts a finger to his lips, and shushes her, almost inaudibly, and he thinks she grows even paler. Her eyes grow wider, her knuckles bleed white from their hold on the fabric of her gown.

She walks away from him, not looking back, but he can still see her shaking.

Well,  _now_  she  _knows_.


	37. Toffee and Rain, All Over Again (originally posted on Dec. 2nd, 2013)

She’s tried to wash out the taste in her mouth, but no matter what he does, the taste in her mouth becomes permanent.

Wendy does not want to think about it, what happened (the clashing of teeth and tongue and  _Peter_ and fingers digging into her hips and his body pushing against her and scorching skin  and bites and bruises and  _Peter, Peter, Peter_ ),  _again_ , but the taste does not fade away, after he has finished kissing her like she is  _air_  and he is  _suffocating,_ and even after days and days and sometimes even a  _week_  of not seeing or interacting with the Pan, the taste still lingers. _  
_

She thought he would taste like the bark of the trees, the twisted trunks in the jungle, the rocky cliffs, and the dirt on which she runs over when he feels like playing cat-and-mouse, but, _no_.

Peter tastes like  _toffee_  and  _rain._

She does not want to think about it, after the first, nor the second time, after he’s  _melted_  into existence, either right at her side, or right in front of her. Sometimes form behind, an arm will come around her waist, and she will try and fight back, try and  _let him know_  that she is not just some  _girl_   —

But she  _does_ , time after time after time, because there’s nothing she can do about,  _nothing she wants to do about it_.

The taste lingers in her mouth, like a poison, seeping into her gums and her tongue the insides of her cheeks. It will go from her jaw, to down her throat, through her ribs, and curl around her heart. And the taste will  _never_  fade, never lessen its hold.

_(Toffee, she thinks wistfully._

_Toffee, and rain.)_


	38. Smile For Him (originally posted on Dec. 2nd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wendy talks to "Henry" not knowing it's Pan and he accidentally kisses her." (via anonymous)

Peter (Henry) understands that he has to talk to. That’s what Henry would do, after all.Comforting others is what he would do, too. Just like he would laugh, and joke, and spend time with his family.

So it’s perfectly logical that Peter (Henry) goes to see Wendy.

Who has been silent the entire time, except for the time she handed over the pixie dust to Tink.

To  _Tink_.

(Of  _all_  people? Really? Bird could to better.)

When he goes over to her, smiles at her, makes her smile  _back_ , it’s everything that Henry would do. Her smiles don’t come easily, and her eyes don’t crinkle around the corners. Which happens when she’s  _sad_ , and Pan can’t think of much for her to be  _sad_  about.

He’s been keeping himself in check. In character.

Till Wendy.

He hadn’t been able to help himself. Before she could blink, speak,  _breathe,_ he’d leaned up, pressed a kiss to her cheek, and smiles.

She had smiled brokenly back at him, before turning away to tend to the Boys.

_Wendy …_


	39. Tell Me, Tell Me (originally posted on Dec. 2nd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wendy teaches Peter the difference between Husband and Wife and Mother and Father." (via anonymous)

Peter had swooped in to ask her about a three decades after the dreams of being a  _mother_  and a  _wife_ who could be married to a  _father_  who was a  _husband_. It’s three decades after he’s twisted and burnt her dreams to ashes when he asks her to tell him all about it, or else he won’t get his dirt feet off her perfectly clean bed ( _the bed he made for her_ ).

She doesn’t want to tell him, but he grabs her wrists. Tugs her to him, so she’s sitting beside him, so she has no choice but to tell him.

"Husbands marry wives," she says, remembering what her mother had told her, long, long ago. She doesn’t look at Peter when she speaks. She picks off dirt from her nightgown instead. "Husbands love their wives, love them a lot."

"Husbands can be fathers. Fathers can be parents, they take care of their children, if they have children. And wives can be mothers, they do the same. Mothers and wives can be the same as husbands and fathers can be. Does that make sense?"

"Don’t mothers and fathers kiss?" 

When Peter makes a face, she laughs, right in his face. “Of course,” she says. “Mothers and fathers and wives and husbands do it all the time.”

Pan makes another face, and says, “I don’t know why I even bothered asking.”

She makes a face at him, and suddenly, he is  _there_ , breathing down her neck, his arms locked around her, grasping her haphazardly, his mouth against the shell of her ear, for a moment, and she  _shrieks_ (cruel cruel cruel boy), claws at him, and then he’s  _gone_.

(Hates him, hates him, hates him.)


	40. You Never Wore the Mask that was Forced Upon Us All (originally posted on Dec. 3rd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Prompt: The curse has been broken (though Peter was never affected by it), and Wendy finally sees him as the Pan" (via anonymous)

During the curse, Wendy is different, from her real self. Though she originally had been quiet, caring, and could be ferociously furious, all at once, _all in one day_ , she became different. Different from what Pan really knows her as.

The queen’s cursed had made her change, for the worst. Like it changed everyone. But, what she did to Wendy.

It was  _inexcusable_.

Wendy flinches too easily. She’s distrusting, so  _quiet_. Not like how his Wendy is, not like how she really is  _at all_. She prefers to stand away from crowds, walks behind a group. Scoots away from anyone who stands or sits too close to her.

It makes him think that maybe, somehow, her body remembers. Remembers Neverland, remembers the things that happened. Good things, maybe. But definitely bad things. She’s skittish.  _Jumpy_. Like she’s ready to run off into the woods, out of sight (not out of mind  _never never never_ ).

He never gets the opportunity to chase, because her subconscious has already warned her bones, her blood, her organs, that  _she needs to run_. But she probably doesn’t know why. In fact, he knows that she doesn’t. She always looks half-crazed, half-confused, and it makes him want to  _claw_  at the queen till his hands are  _dripping_ with her blood for  _doing this_ to Wendy. _  
_

He can’t talk to her often, and when he tries, he sees ghosts in her eyes, one’s that haunt her. Ones that she doesn’t even recognize herself. And when she does speak to him, in reply, to something that she’s said, there’s an edge to her voice, a voice he never even had the chance to hear in Neverland.

(There is fear and confusion and something cold, something  _icy and bitter scary_  tugging at the fraying edges of her health, and he  _sees it, sees it, sees it_  for exactly what it is.)

When the queen’s curse breaks, because of that  _savior,_  he gets to see the  _ghosts_  in her eyes flee, for just a second, while her eyes become distant. Unfocused. Before she’s struggling to be still, before she’s trying to keep two feet and nothing else on the asphalt below her bare feet.

(The queen forgot to erase a few things. There were  _glitches_ , in her curse.  _In how she erased Wendy_.)

He got to see her eyes refocus, focus on him, as everyone rushed past them, towards Emma, towards Regina, trying to find their loved ones.

When she sees him, her mouth opens, but no sounds come out, and he can see the memories clashing together into her birdy skull, and he thinks that her legs wobble, so he steps forward, does not even think to give her the chance to  _run_ , despite her weak protests to  _let her go_ , but she’s crying softly into his shoulder and fighting with him all at once and he  _just. wants. to_  skin that evil  _queen_  alive with every bit of patience he’d put in in waiting for his bird to  _wake_.  _up._

She’s remembering, she’s  _speaking_  into the fabric covering his shoulder. He hears bits and pieces from her, about how she should have  _known_  it was him but she  _did_  know and that she was  _so scare of everything and the dark_  and  _this isn’t home_ and other things that make his jaw clench because  _Regina is going to pay for this._


	41. The Only Snowflake in Neverland is Made Up of the Island’s Bones (originally posted on Dec. 3rd, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Wendy looks sad. Peter asks her what is wrong. She tells him She misses the falling snow of London. So later he gives her a snowflake pendant =)" (via walkbynight)

It’s been too long since she’s seen snow. In all honesty, she’s never expected it to snow in Neverland, because this hellish island is always,  _always_  warm.

Wendy misses snow. Sure, it turned into mad-tainted slush that covered the fringes of people’s coats and dresses and made a mess of the streets till long after spring started, but she misses the  _cold_  and the  _snow,_ even. _  
_

When she was a tiny little thing, before Michael and John were even there, she used to sit at her window, watching as the snow fell. Tiny hands thumping against the latched window, trying to catch the flakes. Because Wendy Darling  _misses_  cool air and  _icy rain_  and throwing snowballs at her brothers.

She accidentally lets this slip, to one of the Boys, one day, when she is in a foul mood (the heat makes her grumpy; she’s never gotten used to it). She spits the words out of her mouth, into the island’s dirt, and the boy thinks this is hilarious at her words: “it’s  _blistering_  here! don’t  _any_  of you miss  _snow?_ ”, so he yells over to another, and repeats what she’s just said.

Her snarl is the last thing he sees for a short, brief moment as the boy’s face is shoved into the ground, with her  _shrieking_ at him. She doesn’t care that half the Lost Boys are there to see her outburst, she’s  _been here too long to care._

An hand wraps itself around her arm, tightly, and wrenches her off the boy, who’s laughing even as she buries him nose-deep into the ground. He comes up for air, his face streaked with grass and mud, and she shakes off the hand. Knowing its Felix.

She storms away, grumbling about the heat, on her way into the jungle, because  _Peter_  had told her not to come to the camp because he’d said if he heard her complain about the heat  _one more time_  —

Well, he’d finished that with a twist of his lips before turning his back on her.

That was morning.

Around midday, Peter makes an appearance, talks to the Boys, to Felix, and all is going as it usually does until he notices Wendy’s (loud) absence. And when he hears a boy snicker, he asks about it. The boys happily tell him about his bird’s tantrum, and they continue to laugh about it.

Peter wears a smirk, but his mind ( _his heart his heart his heart_ ) is elsewhere. He leaves them, after a while, and no one asks questions. But Felix notices, and says nothing.

Felix is good to him like that.

By late afternoon, Wendy still has no come back to camp. It’s only been ten years since she’d been dropped out of the sky ( _he remembers all too well theflapping her featherless, broken wings till she had hit the water with a sharp splash, and when she had crawled ashore, his mind had drawn a blank_ ). So it’s possible she might’ve gotten lost. ( _maybe maybe maybe.)_

That’s (not really) fine with Peter. He’s almost done with his little surprise, anyway.

By the time the sun has gone done, and the Boys (even Felix) are asleep, she still has not come back.

He is tired of waiting.

(He had his surprise ready  _hours_  ago, back when the sun had been setting, and the air had grown slightly cooler as the light of day faded.)

When he goes out to find her, it takes him about half an hour to find her. And he has to give her credit, that’s the  _longest_  he’s ever spent looking for something (someone that he  _wants_ ).

When he  _does_ find her, though, she has her feet in one of the pools. She’s standing, holding her dress up above her toes. He glimpses knobby, scraped knees, white skin, and tangled hair in the moonlight.

"Wendy."

Her name is a taunt all on its own on his lips, and she whirls around, dropping her once-white gown, so it sloshes into the mermaid-less pool, her face a mask of grumpiness and if Peter didn’t have the surprise clutched tightly in his fist he would have  _laughed_  and then shoved her under the surface of the water.

"I have something for you."

She doesn’t move, so he does.

In the blink of an eye, Peter’s feet are in the water, too. He’s leaning into her space, too close for her liking, so close that she loses her balance, mostly from the surprise of his proximity, but his arm is around her waist, his fingers  _digging into her skin_  through the dirty fabric of the nightgown, but there is not a sneer on his face to be seen. He keeps her from falling backwards, if only for this moment.

There is only a smirk on his lips and then he’s pressing something  _cold_  into her hands, using his (chilled) fingers to make her make a fist around it. He leans forward, presses an open-mouth, chaste kiss to her throat, and then he’s  _gone_.

Wendy topples backward, falls into the (cool) water. Partly stunned, maybe angry, and possibly still a bit grumpy.

The thing in her hand makes goosebumps race up and down the skin of her legs, and her eyes are narrowed with suspicion but her lips are slightly parted in wonderment, wondering  _what —_

It’s digging into her skin, so she pulls it up to her face, and slowly,  _carefully_ , opens her hand, and her jaw drops.

There is a snowflake, made of wood ( _neverland’s bones)_ , sitting in the palm of her hand. It glows faintly, blue, and it’s making her hand numb, and it’s a small thing. Doesn’t reach the beginnings of the fingers, it’s so  _tiny_ , and she —

Wendy makes a fist around the wooden thing, which is made up of tiny little sticks. Strong sticks, which have been tied together with white string. Strong, thin string.

A smile threatens to rip her face apart as she presses her first to her mouth, trying to contain her glee (he joy, her  _gratitude_ ).

No words could justify the loud beating of her heart in her ears, the warmth that’s spread in her chest, despite the cold thing numbing her hand.

(because  _Peter, Peter, Peter Pan made her this, this little thing, infused with his magic._ )

It’s a special thing, one that she keeps close.

She never lets it go.


	42. You Were Right in Front of Me, Dear (originally posted on Dec. 4th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Prompt! There has been a lot of cursed!darling pan lately, I love it. Most of it is more dark, with Wendy trying to escape him, or similar. How about something where she wants to be with him and Peter is absolutely pissed that he hasn't remembered Wendy the entire time." (via calie1003)

Peter is  _not. happy_  when the curse is broken. No, he’s not happy at  _all_. Mainly because it was all so very, very unfair.

He’d had the chance, the  _perfect chance_ , to  _have_  what his. She had  _asked_  after him,  _multiple_  times. And only after he had disintersedly told her  _he did not like her whatsoever while under the curse_ , had she stopped asking if he’d like to go out some time.

_Stupid stupid stupid Regina_.

Ruined all his chances!

And, when he had been  _woken up_. Well, he was  _furious_ , The first thing he does, when he sees Wendy, on the corner in across from the diner, whilst she’s clutching a hand to her chest. Like all her insides are broken, and she’s trying to keep everything in with that hand over her heart, is  _scream her name_.

Her head snaps up, to the side, and her skittish eyes meet his. And then she  _runs_ , because he is  _beyond_  reason, beyond  _angry_ , because of that  _stupid stupid stupid queen_.

When he catches her, he snatches her around the waist with a bony arm. Tucks her to him, while she struggles, and when she stops, she twists around in his arm, and spits in his face.

He laughs. tells her  _just how angry he is_ , that everything he’s ever  _wanted_  but could never, truly have was  _right in front of him the entire time._

Her eyes are wide, and she opens her mouth, probably to hiss right back at him, but then his mouth is on hers.

And her protests are swallowed up.

He never hears them.


	43. Heard You Right (originally posted on Dec. 4th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Maybe Peters reaction to hearing Wendy curse for the first time" (ohhelia)

He  _stares_. Did he really just hear what he think he heard?

He’s shocked at the rough, coarse word that slips out of her mouth when she falls and twists her ankle. She sits in the grass, gingerly prodding it with her dirty-caked fingers,

He stares at her, because  _children do not curse_.

Yes, okay, he uses ‘fuck’ because something  _flickers_  in her eyes when he says it, in just the right context, at just the right moment, but that — that’s different.

This?

This is not very Wendy-like. It’s not a shriek, a scream, a squeak, or yelp. It’s a  _curse_  that slips past her lips and tumbles to the dirt.

He doesn’t like it. No, he really doesn’t.

Because, he thinks, it’s not very Wendy-like at all.


	44. Of Truths, Ignored (originally posted on Dec. 4th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Hello, I've a prompt for DarlingPan for you: "You've always held the heart of the truest believer, Peter. She believes in you more than anyone."" (via anonymous)

No. No, no  _no_. That can’t be right, it  _can’t_  be right at all. No,  _Henry_  has the heart of the truest believer.  _She_  does not have it, does not believe in him like she could have if she were not here for  _Bae_. But Henry looks serious. He shows no sign of jesting, but  _no, no, no_ , this can’t be right, because Wendy has said, a thousand times over, that  _she does not believe in Peter Pan._

"You’re  _wrong_ ,” Peter says. He spits the words out. There are a poison, they are  _lies_ , because it’s  _Henry_ who has the heart of the truest believer, it’s  _this_  boy. Not  _the bird_. Not  _the daling_.  _Not Wendy, not Wendy, not Wendy-darling_.

No, no,  _he doesn’t want this to be true_.

"I saw it," Henry says. As if it’s the most simple thing in the world to comprehend.

_no, no, no._

She’s told him, time after time  _after time_ , that she does not believe in him. In Peter Pan. In anything the Pan does, say, or will do. She said  _so many times to him_ , spat in his face when he’s said something cruel —

"It’s because she cares, you know."

Peter’s eyes go wide, and he wants to silence this boy, because  _he will not take her heart no no no this boy is **it**  this boy is what he_ needs.

"Because true lo—"

Peter is out of the camp in an instant, wishing Henry  _hadn’t spoken a word_. Because he’s taking  _his_ heart. Not the bird’s.  _no, no, no never never never_.

He tries not to think about the lurch the beating thing inside his chest would have made if he’d let Henry finish that sentence.

(But he can’t stop.)


	45. As the Light in Her Eyes Goes Out (originally posted on Dec. 4th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Darling Pan Prompt: Wendy is fatally injured while protecting Peter and dies in his arms. (Btw, I absolutely adore your writing!)" (via anonymous)

He thinks he might be screaming, screaming at the imp. At Henry. At  _Emma,_ at Regina, at Hook — at  _all_ of them. But he doesn’t know, because he can’t  _feel_  anything. He  _can’t_. The savior had tried to  _gut_  him, gut him like a butcher would an unwanted  _animal_ _,_ and  **Wendy** …

_Wendy, Wendy, Wendy._

 

Wendy is  _stupid for this,_ for doing this. (But he can’t call her an idiot. Not now.)

Wendy is clutching her stomach, where the savior had stuck in her magic-infused ( ** _stupid, persistent, cowardly imp_** ) sword. There is  _blood_ everywhere. Trickling over her hands, staining her dress, staining  _him_ , but he is too numb to notice the dampness seeping into his clothes as he drags her to him, so that she is in his arms, which are wound around her body, because  _no, no, no_ —

Wendy is crying, saying how sorry she is, that she didn’t mean to get herself killed. Tears streak her face, fall into her hair, and she’s  _shaking so badly_. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see their faces.

Regina is impassive.

Henry is shocked.

Emma looks  _devastated_  (she had been aiming for  _him_ ). Her hand is over her mouth, and tears threaten to leak out of her eyes. He wants to rip them out of their sockets, he does, he  _does_.

Baelfire — Neal —  _whatever_  — is staring numbly down at the scene in front of him.

Rumpel’s expression is cold.

Snow White and Prince Charming’s jaws are trying to work, but no sound comes out. The woman looks like she’s going to cry.

And he hears Tink crying, trying to muffle the sounds, and it only makes it  _worse_.

Peter looks down at the mess in his arms, and presses a chaste kiss to the crown of Wendy’s head. He begins to rock his body, gently, back in forth, as she coughs,  _spits up blood_. He can’t save her, not with the sword Rumpelstiltskin had  _poisoned_  so they might kill him, kill  _Peter Pan_.

But Wendy had jumped,  _with a shrieked “no!”_ , into the way, and Emma could not take back the swing of her sword. Wendy had  _took a blade for him_.

When he was a monster to her and he had never done anything for her (Maybe give her what he could, but that,  _that_  is not what she deserved. Not what she — she . . .)

_Wendy, Wendy, Wendy._

The only thing he can really hear is her choking, her gurgled words as blood begins to dribble down her chin, and beyond that, beyond  _her_ , he is  _deaf_  to the world. He cannot hear his Lost Boys, he cannot feel the way his voice tears at his throat as his screams slowly die down, and there is nothing left but boyish, choked-up words, murmured into her hair, over and over. His bony fingers have tucked her into the curve his body makes, and one of her hands has managed to clasp his.

He is numb and deaf and blind to everything but Wendy as she struggles to keep breathing for several long, painful moments, from keeping the blood in her lungs from  _drowning her_  (he can’t save her can’t save her  _can’t save her_ ) and he feels something deep, deep inside of him  _break_  as her breath stutters. Her eyes widen, and she whispers his name, with blood on her lips and her hands on soaking through her dress, and he sees the  _love in her eyes._

Before the light in them goes out.

And then there is silence.

Her head rolls to the side, against his chest.

Something  _breaks_  inside of him, deep, deep down. It’s a snap that reverberates through his entire being, sharp,  _painful_. It’s one he knows the island felt, for suddenly the trees are not whispering. The ground is sullen. The sky is dark and cloudy.

The haze of  _brokenness_  around him is thick, hangs over him like a curtain of fog. It drapes over him, like a cloak, while what’s left of his heart spills out of his ribs through broken words that tumble past his lips and into his hair as he rocks back and forth, still.

If the others in the clearing of the jungle are trying to talk to him, talking among each other, he cannot hear them.

He cradles his bird in his arms, hiding his face in the crook of her neck.

_wendy, wendy, wendy-bird …_


	46. What You Remember (originally posted on Dec. 5th, 2013)

His punishment is not to be forced to grow up. Yes,  _they_  are making him go back to Storybrooke ( _they won, they won, they won!_ ). But they’re not going to  _redeem_  him. They’re not going to try and change him  _for the better_. They’re not going to take the safe route and just  _kill him_ , like the imp (coward) of a man wants. Like Emma and Regina and  _pretty much everyone_ wants.

No, they’re going to do something  _much, much worse_.

 When they are on the boat, and begin sailing away from Neverland, Regina and Rumpelstiltskin begin concocting the  _solution_  to their problem, their  _punishment_  to him. Peter has been sitting where everyone can see him, on deck, set apart from everyone else.

The Lost Boys don’t look at him. Felix is kept apart, locked away somewhere below deck. Henry’s mothers make sure he stays far, far away from their son. The Charming’s mess of a family mills about, but Wendy.

Wendy looks distraught, looks like the hands combing through her tangled hair, as she nods along numbly to whatever Tink is saying as she continues to shit beside her, are going to start ripping strands out at the roots. She hasn’t been able to look him in the eye since she got on board the ship, since he passed her by (his hand had slid down her  _arm_  and the sound she had made had sounded like a  _sob_  had gotten caught in her throat), and she’s looking like she’s going to spit up her organs and bones sometime soon.

No one has told him what’s coming to him, but the  _Jolly Roger_  reeks with  _magic_ , and Regina had sent him a sadistic smirk before she’d moved into the captain’s quarters with the imp, who’d shot him a dirty look before the door had closed and he had been shoved off to another part of the deck.

Peter doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but from how Wendy is acting, it can’t be good. It can’t be good  _at all_. He thinks that tears might spill out of her eyes, because when she  _hides_  from him like this, it usually means she knows something that’s going to affect him in the highest degree.

When Regina and Rumpel come out of the cabin, shortly before they leave the seas that surround Neverland, Peter watches with narrowed eyes, with a half of one trained on the bird hiding behind Tink. He can see her peeking around the disgraced fairy’s shoulder, her eyes wide. He can see how they waver, how her hand grips Tink’s arm with whitened knuckles.

(For her), he puts on a smirk, opening his mouth to conversationally through barbs at the two magical beings in front of him, but their expressions are sullen. He thinks he hears someone ( _wendy_ ) choke back a sob, and he’s not exactly keen on finding out what’s in store for him but — **  
**

"Pan," Regina begins to smirk, despite the obvious severity of the situation at hand, and she takes something out of her coat pocket. A tiny, peculiarly shaped little bottle. The contents in it are clear, and there is a light shimmer to them, and if he squints, he can see something  _zig-zagging_  within the glass bottle.

His eyebrows shoot up, and he waggles them at Regina.

(He pretends her does not hear the stifled intake of breath from behind Tinker Bell.)

She hands it out to him.

"How  _stupid_  do you think I am?” he asks her, cocking his head to the side, resting his arms on his knees while leaning towards her and the imp. The Dark One looks like he wants to throttle Peter, but he can’t be blamed. Emma is giving him the same look now (oh, things  _run in that family_ , don’t they?).

"Not stupid at all," Regina says, thrusting the bottle (vile?) into his face. He takes it from her, examines it. "It’s not poison," she says, after a moment. There’s an odd note in her voice, and it makes him quirk his eyebrows at her, for a moment, before he continues to examine the bottle.

"Oh? But it’s  _something_ , isn’t it.”

He pops the cork out of the bottle, and he takes a whiff. The odor gives him a faint feeling of biting back cruel words he’s spat at the strangers who invaded Neverland, and he sneers. If they think that he’s going to  _drink_  this —

"Do you want us to  _make_  you eat your vegetables?”

The queen’s voice has been twisted by the snarl that curls around her words. He only continues to smirk tat her.

"Is this going to turn into a  _truth-or-dare_  game? Because I only play that with  _Wendy_ , see, and — “

"Just  _drink it_ , Pan.”

He glances over at Emma, who looks like she’d rather gut him than feed him the potion, which tells him that whatever this is, it’s going to give him a better fate than  _anyone_  aboard this wretched ship thinks he deserves. (Except the last remaining Boy loyal to him, and the bird who looks like she wants to dissolve into a pile of nothingness right now.)

"What’s it going to do?"

Regina chuckles, and then tells him that if he doesn’t drink it, she’s going to force it down his throat. No one is really happy with this, with the  _solution_.

Peter shrugs. Honestly, if everyone’s unhappy, it  _can’t be all that bad._

So he throws his head back, eyes open, and, before he downs the contents of the tiny bottle in one go, his eyes lock on the shaky bird hiding behind the disgraced bird.

The liquid is already sliding down his throat by the time he realizes that she’s buried her face in the woman’s shoulder.

The taste is sour, and he makes a face. “Nothing happened — ” he begins, mockingly, his smirk twisting so it widens, but then he  _feels it,_ feels it deep inside of him.

Suddenly, there is an icy  _burn_  flowing from his stomach, to his legs, shooting up through his spine, to the back of his  _skull_ , and then —

_everything goes black_.

-

-

-

Peter does not awaken until they arrive safely back in Storybrooke. He is carried off, to the jail, and Wendy is ushered away by smiling, crying brothers and a heavy heart. Her smile is cracked and broken, but they mistake it as  _joy_.

She does not see him until a day later, after everyone has celebrated Henry’s return. Regina and Emma’s willingness to  _work together_. Neal’s claim to  _be a father_. Everyone is  _happy_ , but Wendy is not. Her brothers have to leave, even though they don’t want to, because of business. It irks her, that they treat her like she is a  _little sister_. They treat her like she is fragile, and she is  _not_. They leave early the morning after their return, and the numb feeling she’s had since she was informed that she was going to be leaving Neverland has finally subsided. ** _  
_**

She cries her way through the rest of the night, when her brothers leave, until the sun signals that it is nearly seven o’clock. By then, she has dried her eyes, wiped away her tears, and has been able to conceal the pure  _shock_  of being  _free_  of Neverland for the first time in a century.

When she sees Peter, she’s walking with Ruby, their arms linked. Ruby is telling her about the town, about its inhabitants, about where she can find anyone and anything if she needs it.

They’re walking past one of the shops, when she sees him. Wendy halts, she chokes, and she’s torn between running to him, and running far, far away. Because he is dressed in the same clothes that the rest of the town is, and Emma is next to him, pointing out things, with Snow on his other side, looking amused.

When Emma sees that Ruby is smiling and waving to get their attention, the trio stops and their eyes lock on Wendy. Wendy expects Pan to smirk, to maybe yell across the way, ‘ _wendy, wendy, wendy-bird_ ’, but when his eyes lock on her, he does  _nothing_.

Wendy wants to throw up her bones.

_Is this what they’ve done?_

Emma, Snow, and Peter  _(… Pan_?) cross the street, and Wendy has to school her features into some sort of mask, one that Pan could perfect all too easily.

"Hey there," Emma says a bit awkwardly, but Snow smiles down at Wendy, and asks, "how’re you doing?"

Wendy manages a smile, and is thankful that Ruby answers for her. She’s clutching the other girl’s arm like it’s a lifeline, because the way Peter is looking at her  _is not how he looks at her at all_.

There’s something absent in his eyes, as he studies her like she studies him. There is nothing that tells her he’s remembering Neverland, wanting to get  _back_.

"Peter, this is Wendy," Snow says, smiling, and Wedny  _blanches_ , almost, because this — he doesn’t even —

"Hi, Wendy." Peter smiles at her, in a boyish way, that makes her insides feel like they’re burning, and  _not_  in a good way. She wants to be sick, she wants to throw up —

"Cat got your tongue, then." _  
_

Wendy blinks, and then she is glaring at him. She forgets, for a moment, that  _the potion worked it worked it worked_ , to open her mouth, and spit out words that wouldn’t even chip away at whatever mask he would have been wearing now if —

"I was  _right_.” Peter chortles, and Emma looks like she’s trying to decide between puking, crying, and laughing. Because  _peter pan does not chortle_. No, he gloats and smirks and —

Before she can even breathe a word to him (he doesn’t  _remember her;_ they erased  **everything** ), there is an arm  _yanking her_  from Ruby, and she lets out a squeak, because  _the-not Peter Pan is somehow Peter Pan even though he drank that potion_  —

"Have fun, you two!" Ruby calls after them, as he begins to pull her away. Emma looks like she’s just created some un-fixable trainwreck and Snow White looks hopeful as she is pulled around a corner by the Peter she’s never known before.

Wendy is still having trouble grasping the fact that  _they made him forget Neverland_  was his punishment for all he had done. As he pulls her along, he tells her that he’d been told that she was just the girl he should talk to around here, to get to know the town better, even if she’s new herself — and who even knew how all these odd people could come together to make a  _town_  — and all the while she’s trying to covertly pry his fingers off her wrist.

He looks down once they stop in front of the library, and sees that she’s been trying to get free of him for at least a few minutes. He grins, leans forward, and tells her he doesn’t plan on leaving her be, because she just seems like  _just_  the person he should be hanging around in a place like this and —

Wendy has to tell him that she has to be somewhere, before she begins to give in to the hysterical feeling inside her chest, because  _this actually worked_ , and maybe — just maybe — she’ll get a chance to see what he was like  _before_  Neverland grew bones, legs, skin, and organs and created  _him_.

But the Pan she knows and the Peter who stands in front of her, with her wrists in his hands, drawn up to his chest, with a smirk  _lighting up his eyes_  (that’s  _never_  happened never happened  _never happened before_ ), and she thinks that her limbs might melt. Her heart beats like a hummingbird’s wings against the cage of her ribs.

It’s like meeting him for the first time, without Neverland riddled throughout every crack and crevice in his bones, with the island’s roots curling around his veins and spreading from his heart like a disease.

It’s like meeting him for the first time, because he hasn’t  _really_  changed. There’s no cruelty in his eyes. There is only arrogance and confidence and a  _fire_  that makes her knobby knees want to sink to the ground.

Though, she knows it’s not  _really_  like that. His mind might be different, but he still looks at her like she is something of his. (But there are  _feelings_  in his eyes, that are not tricks, are not lies, and  _that terrifies her_.)

Because what is wrapped around his bones, what’s spread through his veins, what pumps through his heart — it won’t  _change_.

But maybe she can be the one to lie to herself this time. Maybe something will be different.

Maybe —  _maybe, maybe, maybe_ — Wendy can try to be happy. With  _this_  Peter. With the boy staring back at her like he wants to  _devour her whole_ , but not because it’s a  _game_ , though, she suspects he still must like games.

What he remembers, deep, deep within his insides, she does not know. They can make him  _forget_  all they want, but he won’t change.

Peter won’t, even if they tried their best. They think they’ve succeeded, but she knows better, knows they haven’t.

_Wendy knows this best._


	47. Nobody Does That (originally posted on Dec. 6th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Curse!AU Peter has always teased Wendy, but one day he catches a few guys harassing her after school. So he steps in." (via fall-at-dawn)

One of his favorite past times is driving her crazy.

It’s possibly one of the greatest things on Earth for him to do, because every tinge of red in her cheeks, _every_  little sound of embarrassment or infuriating or frustration goes to his head and all he can’t  _stop_ pestering her, no matter. It’s his favorite thing, and he  _can’t_  stop. Doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t much care.

Everyone is used to their interactions, everyone but Wendy, and when she shuffles her feet (code for  _I want to hit you with my books and then run for my life_ ) as she tries and walks away from him, he can’t help but feel the most  _wonderful_ , gleeful feeling inside his chest.

It’s kind of an unspoken-of rule, that he’s the  _only_  one who can get away with it. Because, while his words might drive her  _up the wall_ , they aren’t all that cruel, all that  _harmful_.

So, when someone  _is_  purposefully cruel to Wendy, makes her eyes go  _wide_  and flat, numb, with shock, before they threaten to fill with tears, he steps in.

It’s possibly the angriest he’s ever been, because  _nobody_  talks to Wendy like that,  _nobody nodody nobody_.

He throws his own cruel words at the boy who’d thought he could  _talk_ to Wendy like he had. She’s fled the scene by now, but he’d seen her shove her fist in her mouth. Probably off to find Ruby.

When words are poorly thrown  _back_ _at him_ , words that were cut from  _ice_  escape Peter’s lips. Words that  _cut_  to the boy’s bone, because he saw the look on her face before she’d disappeared around the corner, heading to the diner.

Because  _nobody_  talks that way to Wendy.


	48. Good Days (originally posted on Dec. 7th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Peter and Wendy have their good days. When Wendy doesn't feel the need to fight as much and when Peter doesn't feel the need to be so cruel." (via movedtogardenoftacos)

After every ferocious storm, after every clap of thunder that shook the ground and every strike of lightning that lit up the sky and maybe even struck a tree, there is a  _calm_  emanating from the aftermath of the storm. Once the clouds begin to drift away, night skies stare after you, with the smell of rain still heavy in the air, with your limbs waiting for a clap of a thunder that won’t come.

When they have their good days, when the sky over Neverland is overcast, but holds no threat of rain, or worse — when the foliage is at its greenest, when the Earth below their feet smells the freshest, when the air feels the  _lightest_  — is when Peter Pan and Neverland (Wendy) have their good days.

The Lost Boys are more jovial, Felix’s sullen expression is less frequently sighted, and there are almost no infuriated shrieks or outbursts from the bird. The Pan himself is a bit more friendly, a bit more tolerable, a little less cruel, a little less  _like the Peter she knows_.

The days are far and few between, but they’re still there.

On those good days, Wendy willfully spends time with him. Goes and finds him, on rare occasions, and, even rarer — he won’t toss biting, icy words at her, to make her  _flinch_ , to make her heart  _bleed_. He might let her stay, he might take her flying, he might  _let_  her fly. He might take her for a walk, and on these days, any of those things are more probable than him chasing her all over the island, pinning her to the nearest tree and  _devouring her_  with bitten lips, groping hands, scraping teeth, and skillful fingers.

He is less likely to be cruel, and she is less likely to fight back, fight  _against_ , fight  _with_  him, because the island knows that those days are far and few between, and if Wendy has been here long enough to know the island as well as she knows Peter, than she knows better than to do certain things on those days.

Every few years, they might get a string of good days. But only every few years. Few and far between, but they’re still there.

They still have good days.


	49. It Was Not a Lie (originally posted on Dec. 7th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "the one time peter accidentally said "I love you" and tried to cover it up" (via anonymous)

They are frozen, in the clearing. She has forgotten how to breathe, and he has momentarily misplaced his usual, cutting words. He hadn’t meant to let it slip, it’s something  _she_  would say. But in the middle of a  _fight_ , one that made the sky glaze over with dark, angry clouds. Ones that reflect Pan’s mood. Which is a result of  _her_  words thrown at  _him_.

She goes to step away, but he is already gone, gone before her. He looks like he’s going to choke, going to go  _hide_  till she forgets about this. But she  _won’t_ , she  _can’t_.

Wendy feels like crying, she feels like she’s suffocating, because the weight of his words on her heart has finally settled in and the weight of  _"I only keep you here because I **love**_ you”, a snarled, churning sentence of words that hadn’t been spoken for her ears, brings her to her knees.

She is suddenly cold, and her arms go around herself. Looking around, feeling a bit lost, feeling a bit like he’s put  _water_  in her lungs so he wouldn’t have to  _deal_  with what he’s just said, she calls out to him.

_Brokenly_. 

(because she loves him, too. She does, she does, she does.)

But he never comes.


	50. Words that Cut You to the Bone (originally posted on Dec. 7th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "AU. Wendy is sent home the first time when Peter and her are in a fight and she declares she doesn't believe in him anymore."

When the fight begins, it’s nothing out of the ordinary: Peter says something. Wendy says something  _back_. An insult or remark is followed, and then she responds with her  _own_. It usually goes back and forth like this until A) someone gets knocked to the ground, B) someone gets back into a  _tree_ (never Peter), C) someone storms off, or D) Peter ends up dragging her somewhere and either dangles her above some dangerous body of water or hangs her upside down by her ankles from one of the highest-up branches of the tallest, strongest tree in Neverland.

But this fight isn’t like the ordinary ones (if they can be called that). This one is different.

It starts out normally, yes, it does, but it escalates too quickly to be normal. The words are too sharp, too brittle, too  _hostile_  for an ordinary fight. And then, before they know it, she’s said the words he thought he’d never hear out of her mouth, and the Shadow is carrying her away, back to London, with her screaming harmful word after harmful word, with him scowling darkly.

Trying his best not to bring her back  _and make her take it back_.

Long after the bird’s screams have faded from the island’s skies, he is still standing on the beach of the island. On his knees, staring numbly at the ocean. Her words are still ringing in his ears.

“ _I don’t believe in you, Peter Pan! I wish I never did, and I swear I never will again!”_

Other words, other taunts, other things that struck his heart (she could  _never_  know this, of course) had fallen on deaf ears. Everything but  _that_  had.

He can feel something inside his rib-cage crumbling. It’s because of what she said. It  _hurts_  inside, and it’s because of Wendy.

_Wendy_  did this to him.

( _he wants her back so badly that his bones are screaming at his heart to bring her back to him but he won’t he won’t he won’t because of what she said.)_


	51. Beg to Differ (originally posted on Dec. 7th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Peter's possessive tendencies and Wendy's self-proclaimed hatred for him clash, a lot."

Peter has a tendency to snatch Wendy up, when she least expects it, when she doesn’t  _want_  to speak to or deal with or  _see_  him. When she’s actually getting along with the Lost Boys, when Felix isn’t taunting her about  _whatever it is_  that he finds amusing him today. He snatches up, steals her away, because he is  _convinced_  that she is  _his_. She begs to differ.

She usually ends up running, but after she’s done gasping from the flight over to whatever secluded spot in the jungle or shore he’d picked out for them, she ordinarily screams and claws at him, because he  _cannot learn to share_ , and  _she is **not**  his_ plaything, but, oh, he begs to  _differ_  on that last one.

She says she hates him, wishes that she’d never wanted to  _go_  to Neverland, and he only laughs, only returns her screeches with cruel, frosty words and hands that like to grasp her bony wrists and tug him to him so she  _cannot get out of this_. _  
_

He likes to prove her wrong  _every single time_ she tells him she  _hates_  him, when there is a venom in her voice that rivals his own, but only because they’re  _lies_ , all  _lies_. She does loathe him, and he finds that  _amusing_ , but every time she says  **she hates him _,_** he proves her wrong.

Every.

Single.

Time.

His favorite method of doing this is reducing the bird to a blubbering, begging puddle of  _Wendy_ , with fingers and lips and kisses and bite marks, and she always claws at him, when he gloats, when he  _laughs_  into her hair as she lies there, boneless in his arms as he tugs her water-filled limbs to him in the sand.

Because she can’t  _hate_  him. Loathe him all she wants, he knows she is  _wrong_.

But it will be like this, always. She will  _always_  tell him this.

(And he is happy to prove her wrong.  ** _Every. single. time._** )


	52. Possessive Tendencies (originally posted on Dec. 7th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

>   
> 

Peter hated it when the Boys thought that they can  _touch_  what is obviously  _his_. When Wendy first came to the island, they thought they could  _take_  her. Felix had only done it to irk the girl, but, still,  _he had done it_.

Peter has never liked to share. Not even then, in her first days in Neverland.

He remembers when Felix had done it. He remembers the look on her face, like she had just stepped in something particularly unpleasant, and Felix had  _laughed_  at her.

Felix’s scar has been there ever since.

The other boys, they’d thought she was  _their_  plaything. When they weren’t throwing rocks at her, when they weren’t putting bugs in her food — they jeered at her, in the only way Lost Boys can.

Peter had gone a year without letting them actually  _eat_  anything. You’d never die of hunger in Neverland. But if you were starving, you’d  _want_  to.

They understand now, years later. That the bird is  _his._

_His alone._


	53. It Was Her Turn to Save You (originally posted on Dec. 7th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> fall-at-dawn: "Curse!AU Wendy is the little rebel with the cocky attitude while Peter is the adorable shy book worm. Wendy is in the middle of saving his butt from bullies (again) when the curse is broken and they all remember who everyone is."

"Who d’you think you  _are_? Do you feel  _better_ now?”

The hiss out of her mouth sounds deadly. The flatness of her eyes only magnifies this. (she is  _pissed_.)

Wendy jabs a finger into the chest of the boy who had shoved Peter to the ground, who was still trying to get his things back in his book bag, with scraped palms. Wincing every time his flesh is irritated by one of the materials he’s shoving back into his bag.

It makes Wendy  _furious_.

The adorable lanky boy is shakily getting to his feet, and he begins to shuffle off, with his eyes locked on the ground, looking he’s trying so  _hard_  not to cry, and —

-

-

Peter looks down at Wendy, book bag thrown down to the grown. The boy who had shoved him has run off. His bony fingers have wrapped themselves around her wrists, and his gaze  _burns_.

He’s  _pissed_.

"Peter — "

"I am going to  _kill_  whoever did this,” he seethes.

"What about — "

"We’ll go home  _after_  I kill them!”

(He’s trying so hard not to think of the fact that  _she_  had just saved  _him_. Someone useless, someone  _weak_. She’ll never let him live this down.)


	54. Inner Thoughts, Internal Things (originally posted on Dec. 8th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thefriendlyfeelyunicorn: "Peter feeling conflicted over his attraction to Wendy. Can be dark, AU, or whatever works. Mucho gracias!"

He isn’t quite sure what he should do about the feelings spreading throughout his body.

He doesn’t know if he should pin her against the near and rightly  _fuck_  her until she can’t stand at  _all_ , hurl her far, far into the ocean on the shores of Neverland and hope she drowns, or pull her to him, with his hands on her hips, and just  _hold_  her, for a long, long time.

It’s about fifty years in, in Neverland, for Wendy, and he’s been good about hiding his confusion. But lately, it’s been showing, and even Felix has asked after him. It’s disconcerting, to think that one  _stupid girl_  has the ability to make  _Felix_  concerned for him, because he’s not thinking straight, he’s not at all.

This is confusing. Maybe he  _should_  just fuck her senseless and see if the feelings inside of him subside. But, won’t that just make it worse? These kinds of things with Wendy never work out how they should.

Hours later, he finds himself shrugging. He’ll deal with it later.

For now, all Wendy has to know is that it’s time for another game of chase.


	55. Let Me, Let Me Leave This Place (originally posted on Dec. 8th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Loooooove your writing!!! I check everyday for new prompts, I'm that addicted! Can you maybe do one where, in a game of chase, Wendy makes it to the cliffs on the edge of the island and wants to jump to be free because she is so so sick of Peter and his games? but sensing what she's thinking Peter bolts to the cliff even though she's already jumped, and then his shadow saves her? Sorry it's a little vague!"

When Peter begins to chase her, she expects him to. He knows that. What he doesn’t know is that she has something in  _mind_ , something planned for this game of this chase, because she’s just  _sick_  of it — sick of  _him_ , sick of  _them_ , sick of  _this cursed place_  — and there is only one way out.

Wendy knows where she’s going. Peter might not think that, but  _she_  does. She know  _full_  well where she’s going, and she can  _feel_  that she’s so close to getting  _out of this_ , so close to being  _free_  — and suddenly, there are no more trees.

The cliffs are  _right in front of her_ , and all it takes is a little burst of speed and —

(no limbs flail, no scream scraped past her throat and out her lips.)

she is  _falling_.

Peter scrambles to a stop at the edge, and he  _screams_ , when he sees that she isn’t moving, and his shadow is swooping down, faster than  _he ever could —_

The shadow brings her back up, looking tired and annoyed and like she wants to throw up. He holds out his arms to her, and the shadow drops her into them. Leaves the two collapsed over one another on the cliff.

She tries, weakly, to explain herself. That she’s just so  _sick_  of these games. But Peter is frantically muttering into her hair, holding her close, so her face is buried in his chest, and she somehow, haphazardly, lies across his lap. Fingers comb through her hair and his other hand holds her tightly to him,

But Wendy can’t try, because his voice is  _breaking_ where it shouldn’t, and it sounds  _desperate_  while it should sound  _cruel_. His fingers are trembling, and he’s rocking back and forth, and she can only bring herself to cry in his arms.

He  _can’t_  let her go.

(he really can’t.)


	56. Darling, Don’t You Dare Forget Me (originally posted on Dec. 8th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "(Me during tonight's episode: NO! WENDY COME BACK!) Anyway, how about a prompt of Wendy's goodbye to Henry as Peter, if that makes sense???"

Wendy smiles sadly at Henry (Peter) while her brothers wait by their car, patiently. Henry smiles back, wishing that he could  _make her stay with him_ but that would make everything not  _work_.

"I’ll miss you," she says, "I will, Henry."

Peter (Henry) tries not to grimace. She’s not speaking to  _him_ , she’s speaking to who she thinks she’s talking to.  _Not the same, not the same, not the same_.

Arms are suddenly around him, and he’s struggling to mantain his cover. He’s glad Felix isn’t around, to see him feel like he might be cracking on the inside.

"I’ll miss you too," he says, trying to stay in character.

She nods, and is about to pull away, to go to her brothers (to go from the  _Pan_  when he wanted her all to  _himself_  forever), when he grabs her arm.

It’s a last ditch effort, so she won’t hate  _him_  forever. He can’t make her stay, not in this life time. After everything, he can’t.

But he can do  _this_.

"Peter cared about you," he said, softly, and something crumples behind her eyes, and her lips tremble. "He — he told me."

Wendy’s eyes widen and she presses a hand over her mouth for a brief moment before removing it.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, she says, “I regret it, you know — not telling him I knew. That I cared back.”

Peter cannot contain the shock on his face, that  _after all this time_  — but a kiss is being pressed to his cheek, and she wipes tears off her cheeks as she runs to see her younger (not so much now, though) brothers.

Peter (Henry) watches her leave, in the car, with a small wave back.

He tried, anyway.

Surely, she won’t forever hate him now?


	57. I’ve Seen Your Face a Dozen Times, Yet I Failed to Recognize You (originally posted on Dec. 9th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zangetsuh: "Ok ok ok prompt time, let's ignore the fact that Wendy left Storybrooke, and she sees Henry!Pan and is like nooooooo, but then she's calmed down when Henry!Pan tells her they switched bodies and she's like 'oh okay' and just throw a cute hug in there because Henry is awkward and tall in Peter's body and idk."

When Wendy happens upon them at the town’s edge, it’s because she heard they’d gone this way. Her brothers are back in town. She’d been hoping that she could thank Emma. Thank Rumpelstiltskin, thank Snow White and Charming, for helping set them free.

When she happens upon them, at the edge, with  _Peter Pan_  hugging Emma Swan, she  _shrieks_.

Everyone looks up, startled, and when  _Peter_ 's eyes lock on her, she begins shaking,  _badly_ , and she starts to back up, away from them ( _he’s supposed to be **gone gone gone**  — not here—  not now —  **not here** )_. They’re calling to her, telling her  _everything’s alright, it’s okay, it’s not what it looks like_. But she knows him better than  _they_  ever will, so she shakes her head, feeling her entire  _body_  trembling under the weight of his gaze (it doesn’t matter that something feels amiss, it doesn’t  _matter_ , because it’s  _Pan_ ).

So she  _runs_.

She doesn’t get very far. Snow has caught her around the waist, and she’s  _screaming_ ,  _yelling_  at the short-haired woman to her her go, let her  _run_ , because she’s  _finally free_  — and sweet words are whispered into her hair as she is  _dragged back_  to the mess of a family.

Peter rushes up to her, and she’s trying so hard not to cry, and when Snow releases her, he’s right there to grasp her hands in his, and he’s telling her something, and someone’s telling her it’s all  _okay_.

"It’s not Pan, it’s not Pan," he’s saying, and she’s too busy shaking to get the screams out of her throat that are bubbling up inside her chest. Her eyes are wide, as words tumble forth from his mouth. "It’s me, it’s  _Henry_ , he switched bodies — Wendy, you’re  _safe_  — “

"Henry?" she cuts him off. Not sure she heard him right, but when he beams down at her, nods enthusiastically in a way that is  _so Henry like_ , a smile spreads over her lips. Threatens to split her face at him as her limbs develope minds of their own. They leap at him, wrap arms around him, and she’s smiling so  _hard_ , but her traitorous,  _traitorous_ mind is whispering to her as she tries to stay happy, as she pulls away and examines the genuine joy on his face. On his family’s faces.

The voice in the back of her head whispers to her that, once, she  _had_  hugged Pan. Been  _relieved_  to see him, like she’s relieved to see Henry now. The voice nags at her, tells her that this is a mockery of what the Pan had once forced on her, what the Pan still  _wants_  from her (she’s seen how  _Heny who is Peter_  looked at her, as she’d rejoiced with her brothers; he’d looked sullen,  _sulky_.).

She pushes it to the back of her mind and tries to keep her thoughts of her face, as she says her goodbyes to the  _real_  Henry and his family, but Emma is looking at her like she  _knows_  what her thoughts whispered to her.

She can’t leave Storybrooke fast enough.

(For the fear that Pan will  _win_  whatever plan he’s got in store. that he will take her  _back_.)

(She tries so hard not to look back. But she does.  ** _Once_**.)


	58. Too Late (originally posted on Dec. 9th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "prompt (death) : pan can sense wendy about to commit suicide when she's in the cage but he's too late when he reaches her"

Peter can feel something is off in the marrow of his bones.

When it lingers more than just a few minutes, he’s suspicious.

Nothing is out of order.

Nothing has  _changed_.

But then —

_no._

Peter has vanished before any Boy can say a word, before even Felix can get a word in, and he’s in front of the cage, but he’s  _too late, he’s too fucking late_.

The body is slumped over in the cage, still, and the bars are flying off in different directions as a choked sob breaks the sullen silence and bursts from his chest as he drags the limp, lifeless body to him, and he  _cries_. He does not care for the open, lifeless eyes staring back at him as he buries her face into his chest, sobs wracking his body as he tries to bring her back,  _tries_  to see if it’s just a trick, a  _joke_ , but there is no  _heartbeat_ , no  _pulse_  and he cannot  ** _breathe_  **—

_no, no, no._

_She was supposed to **stay**. Stay _ with him, in Neverland, in this  _place_ , but he should have known she would have  _tried_  this again, should have known  _better_  — because she was  _his_  and she was supposed to  _stay._ _  
_

_So that when everyone left, she would be the only one. The one to always stay._

But she hadn’t.

_(Wendy is gone.)_


	59. Give Her Back (originally posted on Dec. 9th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "When faced with a dangerous situation, Peter is forced to reveal his feelings about Wendy."

Regina holds Wendy above them all. Strands of dark, twisting magic hold her in place, and the look on the queen’s face is one of  _evil satisfaction_. Wendy is struggling, pleading for them to let her go, that this a mistake, while Henry is assuring her that she’ll see her brothers, and she tries to protest — but no one listens. They only look at Pan, who is  _glaring_  back at them.

"We’re taking her with us, Pan," Emma says, "I don’t know what you  _did_  to this poor girl, but —”

"Give her  _back_ ,” the hiss slithers past clenched teeth. His voice is strained, he’s  _angry_ , so angry, because  _how dare they take her from him?_  How dare they try and  _take_  what is  _his_?

He’s had her for a century. He’s  _not_  about to let go of her after so little  _time_  has passed, not when he has eternity, not when he’s planned to  _keep_  her all this time.

(no no no they’re ruining  _everything_.)

"Or what?" Emma says. Her eyes dart from Regina, who looks all too happy to kill the girl in the air, to the girl, who has clamped her mouth shut, and ceased struggling from her place a foot above the ground, and then to Henry, who’s giving her a reassuring smile, and then back to Pan

"Just — just give her  _back_  to me,” his words come out, twisted by the snarl that tears from his throat. He ignores the way they scrape over everyone else, how Wendy’s eyes widen, with something like  _fear_ , and it makes his blackened heart into something that beats, but does not  _feel_  like it should.

"She’s not your  _plaything_ ,” Regina says, her smirk dwindling on her face. Disdain for him, for  _Neverland_ , is writen in her eyes, in the stance of her body, and he sneers at her. She’s only saying this because of  _Henry_. “She’s coming back with us.”

He sees something like hope overtake Wendy’s expression, and he steps forward, towards the crowd of strangers holding the bird above the ground. And he wants it to  _evaporate_ , wants it  _gone_.

Because she is his and they’re  _trying to take her away from him_.

"No," he agrees. His voice is low. Dangerous.  _Threatening_.

His chance of living forever is leaving the island, their ship is already prepared, and they are taking what is  _his_  away.

How  _dare_  they?

"She’s not."

Another step forward.

They all step back. Hook sidles a glance at Emma, who ignores him. He knows how to choose his battles.

"But you know  _what_  she is?”

Another step forward.

Another, back.

Feral words tear themselves from his throat, and he can’t  _contain_  the fierce pounding of his blackened heart, of the  _anger_  coursing through his veins, embedding itself within his marrow.

"Wendy is  _mine_.”

Emma scoffs at him.  _Scoffs_.

"Look, kid," she says, giving him a ‘you’re crazy’ look, "she’s not your anything, and we just wanna get  _out_  of this place.”

"How about a trade?" Regina asks, suddenly.

Pan’s eyes widen. Are they  _really_  —

"What are you doing, Mom?"

Henry looks shocked. Peter scowls, trying not to shake with the  _anger_  coursing through him. How  _dare_ they —

"A trade. Henry, for the girl."

"I  _need_  — ” Pan begins, but Regina cuts him off.

"I can give you a spell. One that will fix  _this_.”

Peter’s eyes widen, and then they settle on Wendy, who is still trying to free herself from the black, curling tendrils of magic. She looks annoyed. Scared. Tired, from all her struggling. _  
_

She realizes he’s looking right at her, and she freezes.

"Done." The word is out of Peter’s mouth, before he can think this through, because his heart had _lurched_  and he’d had no choice but to accept this  _deal_  even if it was a  _lie,_  and before Wendy hits the ground, the tendrils suddenly gone, he is  _there_ , holding her, and she’s  _gasping_ , and he realizes that Regina had slowly been  _choking_  her around her chest, and he spits out threats as Regina flicks a piece of paper at him, smirks, and turns. Ushers the rest away.

They look back, several times, and they even stop, when they see the great and  _evil_ Pan cradling Wendy to his chest.

Regina makes a face.

"Knew he’d give in," she mutters, before heading back, hopefully in the direction of the ship.

"Wait — why did you — "

"Because, mate," Hook cuts Henry off, glancing over his shoulder at Pan, at Wendy, who looks like she’s shaking, before the foliage obscures the view of them completely, "Pan cares for the girl."

"But I thought —"

"He might be a twisted, bloody demon," Hook says, making a face, one that tells them  _all_  just how happy he is to be getting out of this  _jungle_ , “but he still has a  _heart_. Wendy’ll live.”

Emma makes an incredulous sound.

“‘S true,” Tinker Bell calls out, and they realize she’s stopped walking. They halt.

"You’re not coming with us?" Snow asks. "Pan didn’t stop you."

Tink shrugs, eyes flat and dull. Smile a bit lighter than they’d seen the fairy since they came here. “Wendy will need me,” she says, answering it as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

It’s Emma’s turn to make a face, as Tink is swallowed up by the lush, suffocating jungle.

"Alright, guys. We’ve established that monsters can feel, fairies make bad decisions, and that Neverland  _sucks_. Let’s get out of here.”

They leave, happily.

(Henry still thinks that leaving Wendy with Pan was a bad idea. It was, wasn’t it?)


	60. That One Thing (originally posted on Dec. 10th, 2013)

Wendy’s only asked for one thing, once, and it’s during her eleventh year in Neverland. She’s only  _pleaded_ for one thing, after dealing with Boys throwing rocks at her, tearing at her dress during violent games, and putting things in her food.

Eventually, Peter says he gets sick of her whining. While they both know he’s lying through his teeth (well, then, for her, it had been a sneaking suspicion), she says nothing of it, does not question him when, months later, he shows her her little house.

At first, she wants to cry, because it looks so much like  _home_ , but then she realizes that  _he’d made it for her_. Selfish, devil-like Peter Pan had made  _Wendy_  a place to stay.

Even when he whispers in her ear, that she doesn’t get this  _all_  to herself, that she should expect regular-ly  _irregular_ visits, she doesn’t complain — much.

Time passes, and two things happen.

One: Wendy gets annoyed with how often Peter worms his way into her space, her  _bed_ , with skeletal arms wrapping around her, attached to groping fingers that she tries (halfheartedly) to break when they slip under the hem of her gown.

Two: Wendy realizes just  _exaclty_  what he’s done.

It’s nothing new, when she sees it, months before strangers come. It feels like it’s something she should have known. Should’ve seen it coming.

He hadn’t planned on letting her go. Not even then, when he’d hung the non-existent possibility of her going  _home_ , to her  _brothers_.

Peter had built it so she could have something, from him.  _Forever_.

And when she is on the ship, staring off into the distance, with the crew who had saved that boy Henry, who could have saved  _Pan_ , she thinks of the house. Thinks that, months ago, she was almost done accepting that she was going to stay.

Now she’s not.

She wonders just how angry Peter is about that. She remembers mentioning this to Henry, after the commotion in the cabin. Something had sparked in his eyes, and he’d made some quip about  _love_ , which she had stuttered at (foolish girl).

She’s glad Peter hadn’t been there to see that.

To see that, in the end, he’d gotten just what he’d wanted.

Wendy is numb. She doesn’t want to feel the pull she feels, like she should be back in Neverland by now. Still.

Doesn’t matter, she thinks, that she’s leaving, that John and Michael are waiting,

The cracking of her heart, loud inside her bones and her blood, proves to her and her  _alone_  that he’d won.

After  _everything_.


	61. No Amount of Water Can Scrub Away this Land (originally posted on Dec. 10th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Would you Write a Peter/Wendy, Peter walks in on Wendy bathing in the dream shade spring?"

Contrary to popular belief, Wendy  _does_  actual miss baths. She may be  _good_  at being wild,  _acting_  like one of the Lost Boys. But she still likes to be  _clean_. She cannot go  _weeks_  without washing. She can go, maybe, a few  _days_. That’s  _it_.

So she can’t be blamed for going to the Dreamshade spring. And it’s not because she’s an  _idiot_. Peter already  _said_  she’s going to stay no matter  _what_ , that only  _he_  can let her off the island. Doesn’t  _matter_ what she does, if anybody comes for her, if she ever gets  _away_. If she did, she knows, he’d drag her back. Maybe come close to drowning her, then fuck her till she couldn’t stand. Till her body was littered in bruises. Till she remembered that she wasn’t going  _anywhere_.

When she sneaks past the brambles (she’s really, really good at that, since she tried for a year to get in), and gets back into the area of the spring, she tosses her gown aside without a second thought. She’s in the water before her mind can think this through, but she  _has;_ Felix has occupied the boys with something all the way across the  _island_. Peter went with them, and she’d nearly gone mad, being in the camp by her _self_.

The feeling of the cool water sliding over her skin, into her hair, is  _bliss_ , and she can’t help the contented feeling that settles into her bloodstream. She doesn’t  _often_  get days like this.

Wendy pauses. In fact, she  _never_  —

"I was  _wondering_  when you were going to notice.”

Wendy squeaks, whirling around and sinking low into the water (her back had been  _to him thank the heavens_ ) so he can’t  _see_  her naked body. Her eyes are alight with an angry fire to see that he’s been there and he can’t ever give her a break as they lock onto him. He’s leaving against the stone wall, arms crossed over his chest. His eyes are dancing, dancing with something that makes something inside her  _twist_ , but she ignores it, in favor of clenching her teeth and glaring at him.

“ _What_  are you doing, Peter?”

"Well, I came back to  _visit_ , but you were gone.”

Her eyes narrow.

"And I suspected you’d try  _bathing_  on a day where none of us were at the  _camp_.”

Smirking, he pushes himself off the wall, and she falls backwards, the water coming up to her throat as she scoots backwards into the water, till she’s in the deeper part of the spring, till she can’t go any farther without having to keep herself afloat.

"You  _knew?”_

he’s crouching at the spring’s edge. His lips are twisted upwards, and the urge to  _splash_  him overwhelms her, so she  _does_. And when he growls, deep in his throat, she only has time to shriek in protest as arms are suddenly  _dragging_  her out of the pool, fingers digging into her flesh.

"Why,  _Wendy_ ,” he says, as fingers being to trail over her body, “I didn’t know you were ready to play this game today so  _soon_.”

(She ends up shoving him in the water, throwing her nightgown of her head, and rushes out of the spring.)

(She ends up limp, and without the motivation to move, in his arms anyway.) 


	62. Cracked Heart (originally posted on Dec. 10th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Lets have wendy getting her heart ripped out in front of Peter~ (whether she lives or dies is up to you)"

Regina holds Wendy’s beating heart in her hand, a snarl ripping apart her features. Wendy can only clutch at her chest, clutch at the  _emptiness_  there, as she stares, as  _Bae_  stares, Emma stares, they  _all do,_  looking helpless, as Regina begins to  _crush_  it.

It  _hurts_ , feels like she’s getting the life squeezed out of her (she  _is_ ), and a single word falls from her lips as she collapses to the ground as everyone stands still. Shocked. No one is making a move to stop her. Not even Henry, because she’d  _lied_  to him. For  _Pan._

When the word falls from her lips, and she doubles over, clutching at her empty chest,  _desperately_ , everyone stiffens. The word was weak. Barely audible. But they’d heard it.

_"Peter_.”

They go still. Regina stops squeezing. The air has gone stale, with the wafting stench of  _anger_. They start to back away, with the heart still in Regina’s hand, and suddenly the Pan is  _there_ , snarling, and the air  _crackles_  with the sudden gust of wind. The island is just as mad as its offspring and the look on his face is  _feral_  and it  _wreaks_ of bloodlust.

His eyes go to the heart in the queen’s hand. He glances over his shoulder, sees  _Wendy_  clutching at her choice, mouth forming voiceless words, and, oh god, she sounds like she’s  _choking_ , and Peter  _lunges_.

Regina ends up falling back into Emma, and Peter ends up with Wendy’s heart in his hands. He’s staring down at it, intensely, and only when she chokes out his name again is when he turns, rushes to her, and  _shoves_  her heart back into her chest.

(He’s trying so hard to pretend he didn’t see the  _crack_  running down the middle; it’s always been  _broken_.)

Peter stands, hisses cruelty at the people standing in front of him, as they slowly back away. He tells them to  _get off his island_ , and they do, without a backwards glance.

His spine is rigid, his breathing is labored, and his eyes  _blaze_  with a darkness none of them ever saw before. When he turns his head, to look at Wendy, he sees that she is still grasping at her chest, where he put her heart back in, her eyes bulging out of their sockets. Tears streaking her dirty face.

Peter is by her side, pulling her to him with lanky limbs, puts his mouth in her ear, whispers things into her ear that no one will ever know, ever  _hear_  from his lips.

He held her heart in his hands. And it had seemed so, so easy. To try and break it in half.

The fingers of his left hand dig into her skin as he remembers the  _sight_  of it in Regina’s hands, and it makes anger flare up inside him. But he buries it, by burying his face into the crook of her neck, while the ones of his right twist into her hair as she continues to  _cry_.

No one  _else_  should be able to  _rip her heart out_ , like the queen had done.

It’s  _his_.

Nobody else gets to hear it beat.

_Nobody but him_.


	63. Lullaby (originally posted on Dec. 11th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "What about a prompt where the fire is dimming late at night, most of the boys have already succumbed to sleep, and though Wendy's eyes are tired she's just too sad to sleep. Seeing this, Peter starts to play a lullaby on his pipe."

Today has been one of those days. On days like today – where her bones shuck off her grimy skin and slither into another akin to complete exhaustion – it’s hard to keep her eyes open. Harder than it ought to be.

The Boys are sleeping, all of them. It wasn’t a long day for them, though. They’d run around, caused a ruckus, ran all  _over_  the place. Their laughter had filled the jungle, their dagger-filled smiles had darkened what places among the trees were light, and Peter had been all smirks and snarls today.

Yes, it was just  _one of those days_.

Wendy would be able to sleep, but, for the life of her, she can’t seem to tear her eyes away from the fire, that will soon only be a pile of ash and embers. Her body is slumped over, her knees are draped loosely around her knees, and her chin rests in the dip between them. Her eyelids are drooping, and she wants to  _sleep_ , but she knows that when she goes to lie down, a weight will settle upon her chest, and she will either feel like she’s come close to suffocating, or sob herself to near-sleep.

And she’s not in the mood to wake any of the Lost Boys. Not in the mood to suffocate because of the  _weight_  upon her hear is too much to bear, on days like these.

She  _feels_  something shift behind her, and her stomach twists. However, she doesn’t stiffen, or retch. Instead, she allows Peter to step around her and sit beside her on the log. Her toes hang above her ground, and the fabric of her gown is bunched up, so nearly all of her calves are showing. She doesn’t look at him as his gaze burns into her temple. She can’t ignore him, but she pretends that she hasn’t acknowledged him.

She wants to cry enough as it is, anyway.

When Peter still says nothing, even as minutes slowly pass, each second dragging itself by like a snail over sand, she finally slides a glance in his direction.

He’s still staring at her.

Her eyes shift back to the fire, exhaling, but her hands grip around her legs tighter, the knuckles bleeding white, because –

A beautiful, sweet sound, that she hasn’t heard in  _ages_  reaches her ears, and she lifts her head, surprised, but not enough to send her eyes flying wide open, and looks at Peter again. He’s looking at her, his eyes boring into hers, but his hands, his mouth – they’re on his pipe. She can  _hear_  it tonight. She often does, on days like these. Usually, she can’t hear it – the Lost Boys can, though – Peter’s never told her  _why_ – and it makes the choking grip the dark, deep feeling that’s got a hold around her heart –  _blacker than night isn’t touched by day because nobody can make it go away_ – and she’s not exactly sure why he’s playing it. For  _her_.

He’s never done this before.

Her eyelids being to droop, and she blinks, as something  _else_ enters her chest. Something with tendrils, something that  _slithers_  over the beating organ keeping her alive. At first, the urge to retch nearly over _whelms_  her, but, the feeling of suffocation  _fades_. Slowly. Like it’s crawling away, into a deep, dark corner of her chest. To hide again.

Her body is sliding, and she’s not exactly sure what’s happening, but the feeling of  _weightlessness on her heart_ , it’s  ** _bliss,_** and when her head falls into his lap, she doesn’t bat an eye. He curls his body towards hers as she slumps fully onto the log, with her face buried in his stomach.

The sound of his pipe drifts through the hollow parts inside of her, sinks into the marrow of her bones, as sleep slowly,  _slowly_ , sneaks in, through the back door of her mind, because of the  _song Peter is playing_.

She listens, until she is asleep, and the music does not stop till long after her eyes have fully closed.

He does not move from his spot on the log, nor does he move her off of him.

He merely gathers her up into his arms, and curls his body around hers.

_So the darkness inside of her stays **gone**._


	64. He Can Hear You Calling Out (originally posted on Dec. 21st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "if you're still doing Darling Pan prompts: Wendy wakes up from a nightmare calling for Bae (more specifically, Peter's reaction)."

When Peter first hears the whimpers coming from her spot, far away from the camp-sight (this is only her seventh month on the island — just a speck of dust to him, who has been here longer than anyone — but an eternity to her, because she hasn’t  _learned_  anything yet, not really, not about this place, anyway), the first thing he wants to do is go over to her and  _scare_  her awake.

It’s one of his favorite things. The girl is so weary around him, it’s  _comical_.

So he doesn’t. Every few nights, she has nightmares. The first time she’d had one, it had been on the  _one_  night where he had allowed her to sleep as far as she liked from them, and had run further than  _that,_ collapsed onto a heap on the ground across the island in exhaustion.

The screams from her nightmare are still fresh in his mind, no matter how hard he tries to push them out when her subconscious is dragging her into another hellish place whilst she sleeps.

He tries to ignore her, as the Lost Boys do so easily, having been fast asleep for the past three hours on the ground, like her, but then he thinks she calls out a  _name_ , and he can’t bring himself to tell his feet to stop moving towards her murmuring form, curled into herself on the ground, behind the thick, mossy trunk of a tree.

“ _Bae_  … “

Peter has heard that name before. There’s some sort of longing, in the way that she says it, when she’s dreaming, that’s not there when she is awake. When she is awake, all he sees is a girl trying not to hate the one she came here to  _save_. Because of  _him_ , after all, she’s here. Peter likes new toys, and from time to time, he entertains the idea of dropping by to visit whoever he has to thank for bringing such a new novelty to him.

But then he remembers the distant look in her eyes, the way she seems to fighting back tears whenever she thinks of him, in front of any of the Lost Boys, who have made it a game, to see how far they can push her till she’s flailing her arms as she is shoved off the ledge, and she runs off into the trees, as fast as she can, letting branches scratch her face and ferns reach for her ankles as tears spill down her cheeks.

“ _Bae!”_

He peers down at her, careful not to wake her (she always screams bloody-murder, when he does). Her features have contorted into an expression twisted by pain, misery, and heartbreak. She misses her brothers too much, misses  _Bae_  too much.

He feels the scowl twist at his lips before he can school them into something akin to the mask he always wears, has been wearing for longer than he cares to remember as her fingers grasp at the ground, as her nails dig into the dirt as she whimpers, calls out his name once again.

Peter steps away, feeling something inside of him  _clench_ , with something that just might be jealouy (kings have  _nothing_  to be jealous of though).

This is one of those times where he wants to stomp out  _any hope_  she has, and she still has a lot of it, of seeing her family, her brothers — Baelfire — and make her realize that he’s not going to  _let_  her see them, not any time  _soon_.

He tries to push this urge away, tries to tell himself that this feeling inside of him will subside, because, one day, he  _will_  kill her, sweet and slow, and she won’t be speaking of  _Bae_  anymore.

He tries to tell himself he will get  _rid_  of her, one day.

(but he doesn’t; he  _can’t_. so he keeps her.  _all to himself_.)


	65. Insides, Burning (originally posted on Dec. 21st, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "YAY! PROMPT! - Peter gets wendy a new dress"

Peter ruined her last gown. Ruined it beyond repair. Even Tink hadn’t been able to fix it, when she had come by, found Wendy wrapped up in her sheets, inside her little house with the door locked, glaring at the remains of the soiled dress in shreds on her bedroom floor.

Peter had been in a dangerous,  _feral_  mood. He’d tore it off of her, made sure she’d  _watched_ , as he’d tore it with his  _bare_  hands, with his teeth showing through his shark-like smiling, and suddenly, he had been  _there_.

He had been  _everywhere_.

(every inch of her had been on  _fire_ , even after he’d gone. she’s been left  _moaning and pleading and shrieking_ under him, at the mercy of his skeletal fingers, of the way his eyes  _burned_  for her, as his lips had pulled back to reveal a wolf’s smile as she had been helpless, as she had twisted her own fingers into the sheets as she had  _screamed_  his name.)

Now, in the early, overcast light of morning, Tink has left her, with a shake of her hide and has declared herself a failure at trying to hide the smirk on the face, at Wendy’s scowl, at the marks on her bare shoulders, and neck ( _probably everywhere_ ) and the creamy expanse of skin  of her back that the sheets do not cover.

Wendy remains in her bed, because she can’t  _very well_  get up and walk about, with nothing to cover herself with.

She waits, but for what, she’s not sure, till Peter comes to see her. It’s raining outside, around mid-day, when he finally comes to see her. He seems to have forgotten that all he’d left her with is scraps from her original gown.

He’d smirked, chuckled, Had slithered over to her, used his weight to pin her to the bed. And again, whilst the Boys were away, on an adventure of sorts planned out by Pan, led by Felix, no doubt, his fingers had crept below the surface the the sheets, and she had been reduced to a sobbing, shuddering mess below him.

_Again_.

This time, as he leaves, he pauses, grins as he lifts his foot, with a scrap of soiled cotton clinging to it. He turns, glancing over his shoulder at her, and jerks his head towards the dresser.

With difficulty, she turns her head — he’d been at it for nearly  _two hours_ , making her writhe, making her  _scream_ , making her shudder and shake and  _quiver_ , pleading and moaning and  _mewling_  — her body spent, her limbs lifeless, her hair plastered to her neck with the sweat that had dampened her skin, made it  _easier_  for his hands to  _slide anywhere they pleased_ , to see a neatly folded, white bundle of cloth on top of her dresser. _  
_

She blinks. She’s never seen anything that clean before, nothing that white.

(It’s as white as the snow that fell in London before it touched the filthy, muddy streets that she tries so hard to miss and remember at times like this.)

Wendy turns her head back, to look at him standing in the door way, but she finds that he’s leaning over her, smothering her with his mouth, choking her with his tongue down her throat, before his mouth had traveled  _down_ , teeth scraping along the skin, and she’s too  _boneless_  to try and wriggle away from as, for the last time that day, he makes her  _quiver_ , makes her  _mewl_  into her pillow as she tries to muffle the sounds Peter makes jump from the swirling pit of  _twisting heat_  inside of he of her, even though the other inhabitants of Neverland are miles and miles away.

He leaves, with a silent promise on his lips, that plan a kiss to her forehead, chaste, quickly, while his lips had been curved into a smirk that sends the last of the sparks he’d used to light a fire to the tips of her toes to the ends of her strands of hair lighting up inside of her. A promise that tells her  _her dress won’t last_. Not for nearly as long as it should.

By the time she’s summoned the strength to weakly murmur her protests into her pillow, he is long gone. The sun has gone down, the rain is still drumming contentedly on her roof, and the jungle is quiet. Wendy has not moved from where he left her, tangled in her sheets, with an assortment of bruises and marks and as a pile exhausted boneless limbs. She can’t look at the snow-colored dress he’d gotten for her. Not when she knows it will last for little more than a week.

Instead, with great difficulty, she tucks the sheets under her chin, curls into herself on her side, and closes her eyes, eyelids heavy, limbs  _deliciously_ sore. She does her best not to think of the dress, of the tattered ruins it will be in, sooner or later (she can tell it’s a  _lovely_  thing). Does her best to forget the way that, today, Peter had gotten exactly what he wanted, without protest, without bites from her.

All he’d gotten was  _victory_ , in so many ways.

Victory must taste something sweet, she thinks.

(she doesn’t know it actually tastes like  _her_ , on his lips, when he’s alone, at night, left to stare out at the sea on the cliffs. Doesn’t know that  _that_  is victory, to Peter. To the  _king of Neverland_.)


	66. Wish Upon a Starless Sky, For it is Christmas Time (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> annastar2013: "Wendy's only wish for Christmas is that peter will love her in return"

The leaves are drier under her feet in the later months in Neverland, though, there is never snow. The air grows thinner, though, and the breezes are cooler. Autumn, once, could have lived within the bark of the trees and the occasional dead leaf on the ground, but there is no other evidence of change here.

It doesn’t stop Wendy from realizing, each year, vaguely, that Christmas time is upon her.

For her first few decades on the island, she had celebrated in private, by her lonesome. The one time Peter had asked what she was singing about, during one of her first years on the island, and she had tried to explain, he had laughed at her and left her to her own devices, with a sick feeling churning inside of her.

(humiliation was a weapon he used to torment, and he used it well.) _  
_

Now, though, going on seventy (seventy-one or seventy-two, she didn’t know: she would have to ask one of the Lost Boys, one of the few that actually kept time in Neverland. She could feel it, in the air, that it was the festive, holiday season; inside of her, she tingled with the urge to sing carols until her lungs would not allow her to sing.

Knowing they aggravated Peter, she went about the week she had deemed ‘Christmas Week’ (because no one would tell her what the date  _really_  was) as she usually did, singing to herself, occasionally pausing to explain one of the verses to one of the Lost Boys, always doing her best to never make eye contact with Peter.

Mainly because things had changed, since last Christmas. They’d started  _whatever it is_ that she was ensnared in now; bruising kisses, wandering fingers, and sharp, knife-like smiles from the king of Neverland were going to surpass their first Christmas Week, and it was something strange to her.

But she does her best to carry on, ignore that heavy, burning gaze of his and the heaviness of her heart, that increases with every day that passes,  _because of him_ , and, on what she feels is the last day of the week (maybe it’s Christmas, maybe’s it’s not, she can’t  _really_  know), she looks up to the sky.

Clouds are forming a massive storm, soon to reek havoc on the island, as one or two storms do at this time of year, and she is lying in the soft grass that leads off to the rocky cliffs, which lead to the murky depths of the ocean below.

Wendy and Peter are a mass of tangled, naked, warm limbs; he is asleep, with his arms curled around to, his mouth pressed to her neck, even with his eyes closed, whilst her eyes are locked on the sky. She’s never been able to sleep on the last day of this week, never.

John and Michael were always told by their parents to make a wish while the festive, holiday spirit was still abundant inside of him; always said it had a better chance of coming true, so they always had. It was foolish, and it sent a pang of both bitterness and faint, dulled-by-time homesickness through her. Her mother had never told  _her_  to do any such thing. She’d never tried.

But now, with the king of Neverland’s body entwined with hers, with her heart in her throat, with his name scrawled across the smooth surface of her bones underneath her blood and skin, with her love for him stuck in her throat, she silently wishes that maybe, just maybe, he could love her back.

Even if it’s not quite like the way fairy-tales say that people love each other. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Wendy knows not if this has ever worked before, wishing upon a starless night, using a foolish thing her brothers had been taught, but as her eyes begin to droop, and the first feelings of the holiday’s festivity begins to strip itself away from her insides, leaving her feeling hollow, and empty, by the time she is asleep, she hopes that maybe,  _just maybe,_ he loves her, too.

_(in the morning, no cruel words are spoken to her. no biting remarks, no stinging hisses are whispered into her ear. though, he is not nice, he is not overly unkind to her, after untangling themselves from each other. she thinks that, perhaps, this is a start.)_


	67. Aren’t Guessing Games Your Forte? (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "OMG YES. Peter having trouble deciding what to get Wendy for Christmas OR Peter trying to take a sneak peak at the present Wendy got him. (BTW, I love your writing <3)"

Peter stares ahead intensely, lost in thought. His chin rests in his head. He seems to be ignoring the whooping and the cheers of the Boys around him, or, he isn’t aware of any of it at all. This isn’t abnormal, for the Pan, but after nearly an hour, Felix decides to risk a limb, treads carefully to where Peter has leaned himself up against a tree, and asks, “what’s troubling you?”

Peter makes a face, blinks rapidly, and then looks back up at Felix. Scowling, he motions for Felix to come closer, and he does. Crouching, now, Felix frowns at him.

Finally, Peter throws up his hands and makes a frustrated sound in the deep of his throat. His most trusted Boy quirks an eyebrow at him.

"I don’t know what to  _get_  her!” he sounds angry and frustrated and perhaps even  _flustered_. Though, he knows not why the Pan would sound like this.

"Pan?" he prompts.

"It,  _apparently_ , is Christmas time for  _Wendy_. And I don’t know what to  _get_  her.”

Felix tries to conceal his smirk, but fails, so he stands, ready to leave the king to fall back into thought. “So this is a guessing game, then?”

Peter scowls more fiercely at him. “I want this to  _count_ ,” he mutters. “She always  _makes_  me things, things I didn’t even know I  _wanted_ , and I can’t even get anything for  _her_?”

Felix is at a loss, somewhat, for what he should do. Shrugging, he turns, and leaves, going back to his original spot, across the clearing, through the crowd of Lost Boys.

By the time darkness has come over Neverland, Peter still hasn’t come up with anything.

Why does being  _nice_  for  _Wendy_  have to be so  _hard_?


	68. Mistletoe (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Darling Pan prompt: Peter kisses Wendy under mistletoe. <3"

Peter had heard, from one world, that if one hangs mistletoe above a doorway, or some such, the two people under it will  _have_  to kiss each other. He doesn’t very well under _stand_  it, but he thinks it amusing enough.

When Peter sees Wendy, he gets the idea. Lately, she’s been humming familiar tunes, tunes not native to Neverland, the Enchanted Forrest, nor any place he’s been — except for the world with strange mechanisms, with loud folk — where Wendy is from.

He goes there, in the dead of night, after making sure Wendy is fast asleep under the sheets in her little tree-house. Steals away and finds himself a nice bit of the pretty plant. He doesn’t remember Wendy ever mentioning it, so it should make this all the better. There’s a small chance she does’t know of it, of this  _tradition_  that the people of her world seem to treat as both a jest  _and_  a law, but he doubts that she doesn’t, because it is one of the many things that make of Christmas, from what he’s seen.

Wendy never notices his absence. In the morning, she wakes, begins to sing carols. Her heart is a bit lighter with the songs sifting through her chest, from one melody to the next, Her mind is filled with happy memories, of light, of her family, of laughter, and of muddy snow, from London.

When she goes into the jungle, mood as light as a feather, a smile plastered on her face as she sings, seemingly careless for the folliage around her, she doesn’t plan on seeing a bit of white buds, with a flash of red, hanging above her. It makes her stop, pause in the middle of a verse, and she peers up into the canopy of the jungle.

A red ribbon hangs loosely from a branch, attached to what she believes to be mistletoe. It is unmistakable, to her eyes, and her eyes widen, because  _that_  does not grow in  _Neverland_ , and —

Wendy feels him behind her, but doesn’t give herself, or him, any time. She spins around, to face him, and opens her mouth, to yell at him, to  _demand_  his motives for such a thing — _  
_

It takes her a moment to realize the smirk on his face, the way his eyes dance as the air around them seems to shift — to realize the intent behind her. Slowly, feeling suddenly sluggish with the revelation, her eyes rise, to see the mistletoe, and then they fall back, to rest on Peter.

His smirk only widens, and she flails her arms, helplessly, mouth opening and closing soundlessly, till Peter takes it upon herself to wrap his fingers around her wrists and  _tug_ , making her stumble forward.

Wendy opens her mouth, probably to protest, to scream her lungs out at him, but his lips are already covering hers, his body shaking with laughter as her fists weakly beat against his shoulders as she gives in. He pulls away, quickly, and sees that he seems to have stolen some of her breath away. Her glare does  _nothing_  to dampen the warm, light feeling within the cavity of his chest, just inside his ribcage, beside his beating heart.

"You —  _you_  — ” she tries to hiss at him, through bared teeth, but he only swoops down again, swallowing up and devouring whatever protests died on her lips. He pulls away, one last time, to grin down at her.

"Yes,  _me_.”

Peter then pushes all thought aside, and resumes kissing her, with renewed vigor. (but she doesn’t seem to mind this time.)

He doesn’t miss the way she sighs into his mouth, he doesn’t miss the way, when they pull apart, finally, she looks at him, with something soft in her eyes. Something he doesn’t recall ever seeing before.

_(it makes his heart beat just a little faster, within his chest.)_


	69. Haven’t You Ever Heard of Christmas Before? (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Wendy gives Peter a gift, he asks why, and she explains that it's Christmas."

Peter looks down in puzzlement at the box wrapped in leaves from the jungle, to Wendy, whose expression looks caught between expectant and hopeful. He doesn’t understand this gesture.

Her hands are shaking, slightly, and she begins to take the small wrapped box back, looking crestfallen, but his hands shoot out, and grasp hers, over the present, and she pauses in her movements.

"What are you doing, bird?"

It’s only her third year on the island, she’s been carefully keeping track, because she knows that, soon, she’ll lose track of the days and weeks that pass her by without much notice (though they say time stands still in Neverland, and so far, they’re  _right_ ), and she  _knows_  that it’s nearly Christmas. And isn’t this the time of year where you put aside your hateful feelings, your bitterness, in sharing something with others — to at least try and bring some semblance of joy to the place that you live in?

Wendy’s never tried to get anyone on this island to celebrate with her. She keeps the carols to herself, keeps the little decorations she’s made hidden away, in a hollow tree (which Peter has found, unbeknownst to her, and marveled at, because he hadn’t known the  _reason_  for them). But this year, she thought, painfully, of what her mother might tell her to do. (To be kind.)

Wendy, dare she say, has grown  _somewhat_  — accustomed to Neverland. To the Boys, to its  _king_. (It’s too early in her time here to say that her attempts at escaping have been fully stamped out by failing each time. When she runs, it’s still to try and get off the island. Not just because of Peter, even though, deep inside, she knows she can’t.)

So why not, she thinks, despite the sinking feeling in her chest, try and bring some sort of  _good_  out of this situation? ( _liker mother would want her to_ )

"It’s … it’s Christmas?"

Peter only quirks an eyebrow at her, still not dropping his hands. Which is a good sign, she thinks. He hasn’t tossed it away, hasn’t laughed at her for this.  _More good signs, or is she prolonging the mockery that she expected as soon as she’d though of doing this for such a thing like Peter?_

"Christmas," she repeats, a bit more steadily, her eyes imploring, but he only shakes his head.

He doesn’t  _know_!

The words tumble out of her mouth before she can think to stop them. “Christmas! It’s the time where people are festive, where people are filled with joy! There is gift giving and shared love and an abundance of kindness, and it’s such a lovely, colorful time of year, and it makes the snow look bright like the stars. It — “

“ _Gift giving_?” Peter interrupts her, looking incredulous.

Wendy tries to smile, nods, and thrusts her gift towards him, into his hands. He takes it slowly, and her hands go behind her back. Her half-smile fades to the same expression her face had been set in when she had first presented him with the wrapped box. Except now, she looks as if she expects the worst.

He looks like he’s at a loss, at what he should do, but another glance up at her tells him that he needs to open it. (she’s too anxious for his taste, so he figures he might as well.)

Carefully, he undoes the tie. Upon a closer examination, he finds that it was cut from the cloth of the gray blanket he’d given her. He shakes his head, still perplexed, and (without thinking) stuffs it in his pocket. He looks at the crudely made box, not sure what’s inside of it. No one’s ever given him a  _gift_ before.

"Go on," she urges, softly, and his eyes flash up to her. She’s grasping handfuls of her nightgown in her hands. Still looking hopeful, but at the same time,  _not_  hopeful.

_(strange.)_

He sighs, shrugs, and carefully opens the box, his fingers scraping over the wood as he does so. He realizes she made it herself as he lets his fingers pull out whatever object she’d put in the box, and examines it. Lets the box drop to the jungle’s floor.

It’s a tree, he decides, a tree that fits easily in his hand. An oddly shaped one, at that. Carved out of wood, maybe from firewood from near the camp-sight? He doesn’t know, but as he brings it closer, he sees that there are little things attached to it. He runs his fingers over the rough wood, tracing out the small little decorations till his index finger finds the star on the top.

He looks back up at her, to see that she seems to be holding her breath.

"You made this for me?"

Wendy nods, carefully, and Peter goes back to examining it, turning it over in his hands.

"Why?"

"Because … it’s something I should do, for you, at least once, I suppose?" at his quirked eyebrow, she rushes to say, "it doesn’t matter that you keep me here, not when it’s Christmas! Christmas is a time to be kind, to give presents to others who you would not usually give to! It’s a time of joy and song and festivities, of light and friendship and  _family_.”

"And … what were you hoping to accomplish in giving this to me?"

He sees her expression fall, and he feels that a part of him is regretting saying this.

"It … well, I was hoping you’d like it."

She begins to turn away, and (without thinking) he stuffs the small tree in his pocket, and steps forward, grabs her arm, and tugs her to him.

"What makes you think I  _don’t_?”

Her mouth opens and forms words, her expression miffed, but he doesn’t give her time to ask about it.

"You should tell me more about this Christmas you have," he says, realizing that he’s holding her hands in his, and lets them drop (but doesn’t step away).

"Well … what would you like to hear about? Saint Nicholas, or the traditions?"

"He sounds like a fat old man." Peter says after a moment.

Wendy bursts into laughter, clutches her side as the sound rings wonderfully in his ears as she nearly doubles over. “Oh, I’ll tell you about him first!” she says, once she’s calmed down, and she’s able to stop laughing. He takes his arm (without thinking?), and begins to lead him towards the little place in the jungle she’s claimed as her own ( _he let her_ ), a little clearing that he had deemed unimportant to him.

Wendy begins prattling on about Christmas, and holidays, and presents and joy and such, but his other hand goes to his pocket, traces the shape of the tree absently.

( _he likes her gift. no one’s ever given him a present before.)_


	70. So Close, So Far Away (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Darling Pan Christmas! Peter is terribly furious at Wendy and torments her by taking her back to London to watch her brother's celebrate Christmas without her. (Not to say they'd be happy without her, but where ever your creative mind takes you! Happy Christmas Eve! Sorry to be the anon with the dark-christmas prompt, I wanted to see if it could be done!)"

Peter’s nails dig into her skin as he forces her closer to the glass of the window, while snow falls around them, while she shivers under his hovering form, his sneer.

She fights back tears as she watches her family inside bustle about, preparing for Christmas Eve dinner. With every breath, she chokes. Wendy  _feels_  satisfaction rolling off of him, in waves.

( _she hates him, hates him, hates him_.)

She shouldn’t have angered him, like she had. This time, she shouldn’t have fought  _back_. No, it made her feel sick to her stomach, to see that they were going about their normal lives, like she was still  _there_ , except she wasn’t.

They smiled, they laughed, and they seemed to ignore her old place at the table. They’d taken away her old chair, they’re  _singing_ , and she can hear her heart breaking only seconds before Peter drags her away, through the snow.

"Back to Neverland," he chirrups, ignoring her as she sobs, begging him to let her see them, just to let them know that she is  _alive_ , but he doesn’t. 

His face is twisted up into a sneer as she claws at his arm.

(she should’ve known  _better_ , by now.)


	71. Her Decorative Accident (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> annastar2013: "Wendy tries to decorate a tree and falls. She is unconscious when Peter finds her.When She wakes up in his arms he acts mad at first but as he carries her to her tree house to take care of her Wendy realizes he's upset because he was scared he had lost her. When she is feeling better he uses magic to decorate multiple trees for her"

When Peter refuses to help her decorate one of the jungle trees she’s chosen as  _her tree_ , she goes off and does it herself. Peter can’t help but wonder how she made it through her own world alive, as he watches her storm off, only to be swallowed up by the lush greens and browns of the wilderness of Neverland.

It’s some time later, since she left, and she hasn’t returned. It makes him furrow his brow, makes his mouth turn down in a frown. The Boys have noticed her absence as well; even Felix has taken a notice to it.

Mainly because, at this time of year, Wendy is teaching some Boy a carol from her world, telling them stories about the traditions of her holidays, ones that he’s tried so  _hard_  to stamp out, because  _she is never going back_ , but, over the years, he’s let it slide, let her hang onto whatever sliver of  _whatever it is_ that makes her smile brighter during ‘this time of the year’, as the puts it, though she can’t  _really_  know.

(he doesn’t tell her it actually  _is_  Christmas time in her land, that the island is bending to his will, to give her some sort of  _sign_ , each year, some small, little thing, so she knows, because it brings the biggest and brightest  _smiles_  to her face, ones that even Peter can’t make stay for as long as  _Christmas_  can.)

When the day’s light begins to fade, Peter finally gets up, and starts off into the jungle. If  _Felix_  notices Wendy’s gone, then something  _must_  be amiss.

(he tries to ignore the fact that he just might be  _a little bit concerned_.)

It doesn’t take long to find her. And when he does, he loses control, over the frantic beating of his heart, over the light, sick feeling blossoming inside his head, his chest, his bones, as he sees her limp form lying face down in the grass, next to the tree she’d claimed as  _hers_  and  _demanded_  that he not come near it.

His feet are striding towards her before he takes in the blood matting her hair, near her left temple, and before he can even  _think_  about what he’s doing, he’s gathering her to him, muttering into her hair as he picks her up, and begins carrying her back to the camp, to her tree-house.

His blood is  _singing_  with a broiling, unnerving  _panic_.

_  
_  
_

When she opens her eyes, she finds that she’s not in the jungle. Her head aches, and she feels something warm around her. It takes her a moment to realize that an arm is slung about her waist, that she is on her bed in the tree-house, and  _squeaks_ , feeling her cheeks heat as she tries to pull away. No! The three, she has to finish decorating the Christmas tree —

“ _No._ " She hears the growled word, deep in his throat, before her body is yanked back against his body. His other arm comes around her, successfully caging her in. "You’re not going  _anywhere_.”

His voice is shaky, and she frowns, trying to wriggle away as she does. His nails find the skin of her arms and dig in, till there are ten bleeding crescent-moons in her skin, that will soon scab and scar over (till she has stopped struggling).

Wendy doesn’t know what’s gotten into him. She hasn’t done a thing wrong yet; she hasn’t forced him to partake in any of the festivities, she hasn’t spat at him in a week (mainly for the sake of her Christmas, because she’s saving all her cruel words and biting remarks for the time after, because then he can’t  _take_  what little she has left in  _his kingdom_ ).

"Peter, I’m  _fine_ , I just fell — “

"I said  _no_.”

She sits in the cage of his arms, still for only a moment, before twisting around to yell at him, to demand that he let her  _go_  —

Peter’s expression looks nearly ashen, in the evening light filtering in through her window. His jaw is set, his eyes glitter back at her, dully (icily), and she thinks that she’s never  _seen_  him so furious before.

"Peter, what — "

"You  _fell_.”

His voice is strained, and she blinks, confused, for a few long moments, before her eyes widen, and she shakes her head, gently, her own expression softening.

"Peter," she whispers, "it’s okay, I’m fine."

He swallows, hard, but doesn’t say anything. “I’ll stay, she murmurs, twisting around fully in his arms so she can hug him. He stiffens at the contact, but gradually relaxes. “I’ll stay, Peter.”

(he lets his head fall on her shoulder, if only so she can’t see the look of  _relief_  pass over his face.)

_  
_  
_

"Peter, can’t I open my eyes now?"

"Not yet, bird."

Peter continues to lead Wendy through the trees, carefully, so she doesn’t step over anything (he had to dress her head-wound himself and there had been a  _lot of blood_ ).

Finally, he stops them, goes to stand behind her. He moves his hands so they’re over her eyes. “Open your eyes,” he says, and the sound of annoyance that reaches his ears tells him she has.

"Ready?"

"Peter,  _just_  — “

Peter takes his hands away.

In front of them, a cluster of jungle trees are decorated with bright red ribbons, smiling elves with rosy cheeks. Bells sway in the light breeze of the night, and when she doesn’t make a sound, he begins to fidget, till she turns around, with the biggest smile on her face.

"Peter!" Her arms are around his neck and her laughter is in his ear before he can say anything, and, almost awkwardly, he winds his arms around her. "I thought you didn’t want to help me," she says, pulling back slightly to look at him.

He shrugs. “I didn’t  _help_ , I did it all by myself.”

Wendy’s smile widens, and she shakes her head, but she buries her face in his shoulder, murmuring thanks to him. Over her head, he looks at the lights he summoned, how they twinkle in different colors back at him. Wondering why this makes her so  _happy_. He doesn’t very well understand it, but the look on her  _face_  had been worth it.

It had made his heart  _soar_.


	72. You Smile Brighter than Ice lit up by Sunlight (originally posted on Dec. 24th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> annastar2013: "Wendy is depressed and doesn't even want to leave her treehouse because she misses Christmas. She stays in her room till Peter comes and carries her out to the lake where he has caused it to snow and freeze the lake. He then takes her ice skating and kisses her in the snow"

"Peter," Wendy protests, trying to pry his fingers off of her arm as he continues to drag her through the jungle, "I said I don’t want to play any  _games_  today.”

"You never  _do_ , this time of year,” he says over his shoulder, trying his hardest (and succeeding) not to stare at the dulled light in her eyes, the way her movements seemed sluggish, heavy.

"Peter, let me go back to the house." She sounds frustrated, like she’s going to cry, and he very well wouldn’t like her to. Eventually, she plants her feet firmly in the ground, looking close to tears. He huffs out an annoyed breath, lets go of her, for only a moment, to only throw her over his shoulder, and carry her the rest of way.

The sound of her angry protests brings a smirk to his face, as he continues his trek through the jungle more easily. He ignores the weak pounding of her fists on is back as he finally clears the jungle, and lets her fall to the ground with a solid thud.

When she falls, she cries out, because when she meets the ground, she finds that it is  _cold_. Wendy sees her breath cluster about in a fog in front of her before she jolts to her feet, startled by the white of the ground. Peter waits, silently, as he whirls about, her eyes skirting all over the place.

Everything is covered in  _white_. The lake — the lake is covered in what she thinks is a thick layer of smooth, perfect ice. She hasn’t  _seen_  ice, or her breath in the air, or  _snow_  (or felt the cruel bite of winter) for nearly a century now. The sinking sun makes the ground beneath her numbing, bare feet sparkle, and she finally looks to Peter, who looks like he expects the worse. Instead, she runs to him, throws her arms around him, and begins to  _cry_.

Peter sighs. “I was hoping this would have the  _opposite_  affect,” he mutters, after a moment, before pulling away from her.

"No, no, you don’t  _understand_!” She wipes away her tears, quickly, and he finds that the smile she is giving him burns bright than the sunlight reflected off the ice. “You did this for  _me_ , you’ve no idea what it  _means_  —”

Peter cuts her off. An arm goes around her waist, and she is  _yanked_  in a direction, her breath leaving her lungs at the sudden, unexpected movement, and before she knows it, she and Peter are  _spinning_ , and she feels a shriek leave her lungs before she realizes that they are  _gliding_  over the ice, with him lifting her above it.

He spins them in circles, as her laughter fills the area of the lake and beyond it. It touches the trees, it touches the bottom of the bottomless lake (it even touches the dark pit inside Peter’s heart, makes his blood  _sing_ ) and snow begins to fall, gets caught in her  _hair_ , and he’s never seen her this  _happy_  before, especially since, around this time of year, she grows sullen. Unhappy, and lifeless, but  _now_ , it is different, so deliciously, wonderfully  _different_.

(he should have done this  _ages ago_ )

Eventually, even he becomes dizzy, so, with one last, sudden jerk of his body, they go spinning off the surface of the iced-over lake, and they fall in the snow, with him on top of her. She shrieks as the cold seeps through her nightgown, touches the bit of spine that sticks out of the skin on her back, but it is swallowed up by Peter, whose mouth has collided with her.

(he only stops kissing her, to allow her to breathe, before doing it all over again.)

_He’s never seen her this happy before_.


	73. Untitled (originally posted on Dec. 26th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kriegersgelion:
> 
> I know by the stir of the branches  
>  The way she went ;  
> And at times I can see where a stem  
>  Of the grass is bent.  
> She’s the secret and light of my life,  
>  She allures to allude ;  
> But I follow the spell of her beauty  
>  Whatever the mood.  
> I have followed all night in the hills,  
>  And my breath is deep,  
> But she flies on before like a voice  
>  In the veil of sleep.  
> I follow the print of her feet  
>  In the wild riverbed,  
> And lo, she calls gleefully down  
>  From the cliff overhead.
> 
> \- Edwin Markham

Peter Pan would be lying if he told you he didn’t care for the London girl, which he had molded into a wild, lost thing, with tangled hair, sharp, blunt nails, grimy skin, and a stained dress.

He would by lying if he told you he did not  _love_  her, but lying is one of his many, many talents, talents he’s had  _centuries_  to perfect.

But the island knows it. It whispers to him, in the swaying of the branches int he breeze, telling him which way she went, telling him where she just might be.

Though she has become feral, she still pulls him towards her. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t know why. It could be that she uses her nails for clawing her way out a tight corner, it could be that she has steel under her skin, wrapped around her bones, it could be that  _only_  half her heart belongs to him.

Not all of it,  _never_  all of it, though he finds her, always finds her. No matter how fast or far she goes, she runs, she  _flees_ , he catches her.  _Always_.

She taunts him, from above, when he finds her. Never out of breath, is he, but she is. He can see her limbs tremble from where he stands, far away, as she calls down to him, tells him  _again and again_  that he cannot  _truly_  catch her (have  _all of her_ ), and it sends something thrumming through his blood, through his veins, pulsing through his beating heart.

It makes him  _grin_ , with dagger-teeth and lips bloody from where they bit into her skin the night before. It makes her eyes widen, regret what she has said. Makes her turn and  _run_ , with renewed strength,  _over and over again_ , till he catches her, shoves her up against the nearest tree.

_Devours_  her, like he tries to consume every inch of her, every time.

It’s the game they play, and it’s important to know that he hold half of her heart in his skeletal hands. As the island whispers to him, where she is, about the wicked grin on her face that will be wiped off when he drags her to him, sometime soon, he tries to ignore the fact that a part of him is hers, too.

(she is the only one who can  _make_  the King  _feel_  as he does.)

Neither know that they hold all of each other’s hearts, as they chase, as they run, as blood runs down their lips and bruises blossom on her skin and fingers dig into his scalp. They know not that they hold them in their shaking hands, twisting and molding them, without  _knowing_  that they do so. Without  _knowing_  what’s happening to them, what they’re doing to each other’s insides.

He has written his name all over his skin, a thousand times over.

(but her name is scrawled on his bones, scratched into them from the years that have passed them both by.  _she does not know this_.)


	74. Music to my Ears (originally posted on Dec. 27th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Writing Prompt: Peter lets Wendy play his pipes."

"No, no,  _like this,”_ Peter rolls his eyes as he takes the pipes from Wendy, who looks so  _lost_  he wants to  _laugh at her_ , and puts them to his lips. “See?” _  
_

Wendy’s brow furrows, but she shrugs, and holds out her hands, fingers flexing.

He sighs, and hands her the pips, again, and she begins to blow air through them. A soft, tentative note comes through — something wistful, something he doesn’t want to  _hear_.

(It reminds him of the early days, when Wendy begged and cried and pleaded for him to take her home because  _she could not stand this place_.) _  
_

Peter quirks an eyebrow, asking her, silently, tauntingly, if it’s all she can do. (he doesn’t want to  _hear_ that again, that lonely, despairing note.)

Wendy scowls at him, and then blows. Hard, through the pipes, and a sound comes out, high-pitched and painful even to  _his_  ears.

(It’s okay, though. It’s not  _that_  sound.)

He smirks.

"Music to my ears," he says, snatching the pipes back, and setting them down in the grass. Wendy opens her mouth to protest, but his hand is up her dress before she can get the words out.


	75. a Gift You Don’t Deserve (originally posted on Dec. 28th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Wendy gives Peter a thimble."

"Don’t you like it?"

Again, he doesn’t respond. He holds up the thimble to the light of the sun, squinting at it.

Her heart sinks, and she starts to turn away.

It doesn’t mean much, that thimble. No, it’s just something — the  _only_  thing — she had left of home, of her brothers and mother and father.

Peter wants all of her, every inch of her, but he just  _can’t_  have that (she won’t let it happen, even if he does make her heart ache in her chest). But he can have  _this_.

He doesn’t deserve it, but she’d like him to have it. (To prove that he’s as close as he can get to owning every inch of her.)

“ _Wendy_.”

His voice is quiet, and she starts walking, not wanting to hear him  _laugh_  at her, but he catches her wrist, turns her around, and drags her to him.

He holds up the thimble for her to see, in between his index finger and his thumb. She swallows, hard. She wouldn’t be very surprised if he crushed it, right in front of her, or turned it into a frog — or something just as horrid.

"See this?" he murmurs, his eyes locked with hers, and she can’t nod, can’t move, because she already knows how this is going to end. Making her  _watch_  is cruel, so viciously, typically  _cruel_  of him —

He slowly,  _slowly_ , closes his fist around her, and she watches.  _Stunned_ , as he opens his hand.

It’s gone.

Her eyes widen.

_"Peter_  — “

She chokes on the hurt bubbling up inside her chest, but he cuts her off anyway.

"You’re never getting it  _back_ ,” he says, releasing her, and steps away.

Wendy doesn’t speak, and so he seems to melt into the jungle around them. Disappears, with a small, tiny smirk on his lips.

_he kept it._ _he kept the thimble._ _**he kept it**._

Wendy tries so hard to keep her heart from thudding erratically against her chest, but she starts heading to her tree-house, unable to keep eyes from stinging.

With  _relief_.


	76. Your Heart is Mine, Mine, Mine (originally posted on Dec. 28th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Darling Pan | Wendy has no room in her heart for Peter. So he rips it out and keeps it all for himself."

Peter holds her beating ( _pure_ ), glowing heart above Wendy’s head, a sneer twisting his lips as she chokes on soundless sobs, grasping at the place where he had reached into her chest, with a cold,  _rageful_  look in his eyes, and had yanked out her heart.

"Do you  _see_  this?” he hisses, bending over her, as her eyes sting. “Your heart is  _mine_.”

Wendy shakes her head, the emptiness, hollowing and  _cold_ , spreads from her chest, to her toes, to her fingertips, to the roots of her hair.

"If I can’t have you," Peter says, grabbing a handful of Wendy’s hair, dragging her to her feet. She claws at his chest, trying to tell him he needs to put it back inside her, but he holds it away from her scratching hands, his eyes not leaving hers. "I’ll have your  _heart_.”

He squeezes it, for good measure, and she gasps. He jerks her head to the side, and his mouth is at her ear, wracking shivers down her spine as he speaks into it, his body curling into hers as he does so,

"You are  _mine_ ,” he hisses, “you will never  _leave_  Neverland. And if you can’t  _love me_ , if you can’t  _give me your heart_ , I’ll  _keep_ it.”

Her eyes seems to bulge, and he smirks, pulling away, so their noses are only a breath apart.

“ _Forever_ ,” he says. He drops her, then, steps away from her.

Wendy collapses, still grasping at her chest, sobbing, now, and watches as he walks away, with her heart grasped tightly, securely, in his hand.


	77. The Way it all Turned Out (originally posted on Dec. 28th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> slushiebear: "You may get this twice, experimenting with the asks. Ok prompt, Peter wins, what does that mean for Wendy?"

_He’s won, he’s won, he’s won. The King has won._

Panic overcomes the town like a poison. It seeps into the blood and bones of every man, woman, and child. No one escapes it.

No one but the  _bird_.

As the green, thick fog rolls in around the townsfolk, Wendy is left in the middle of the road, feet bare, the bath robe wrapped tightly around her body. The only thing she can do is  _stare_ , as the townsfolk – the people she hasn’t met yet, the people who took her  _here,_ away from Neverland – fall to the ground, uselessly clutching at their throats as the choke on the curse as it spreads throughout the town.

It’s not good, that she’s still here. She stayed, but she knows she shouldn’t have. It’s probably one of the worst ideas she’d ever had – but she hadn’t expected  _this_.

Wendy had been half-hoping that Pan hadn’t made it, that Pan had  _truly_  been – but half of her had been hoping that maybe,  _just_  maybe, he’d made it somehow. No one had told her that he had actually _survived_ , though. No one had told her  _anything_.

Peter’s laughter seems to travel with quickly-moving fog, and it snaps her out of her immobile state. Before she knows what she’s doing – before she can think about what’s going to happen – her legs are carrying her down the road, away from the heart of the town.

Pan doesn’t know she’s here. He thinks that she  _left_ , with her brothers, but  _no_  – she’d stayed, because of Emma and Bae and Henry – and now –  _now_  – she wishes that she hadn’t.

But it’s too late for that now.

Her legs carry her far, farther than she’d ever get in Neverland. She goes by the road, praying and hoping to whatever God she stopped asking to save her long, long ago to maybe spare her  _this one time_  and not let Peter catch her.

If there is something holy up on high, it does not hear her silent cries.

Wendy hears his voice, when she’s only several meters past the town line. It makes her stumble, fall – down, down, down to the pavement. She cries out as she hits the ground, and her heart thuds uncontrollably fast inside of her chest. Her lungs burn, from how far she’s run, and her limbs are sore with a familiar ache – one that tells her she won’t be able to run much farther.

The adrenaline is wearing off.

She sees him walking towards her, looking amused – not surprised, that she’d stayed, but he looks so _smug_ , so  _pleased,_ and it makes her stomach lurch as he nears her. She scrambles back, still on the ground, scraping up her arms in the process, her sleeves having ridden up her arms only seconds ago.

“Peter—”

“And just  _where_  do you think you’re  _going_ , Wendy?” his expression is tainted by a malicious sort of glee – a delight that sends unpleasant shivers rolling down her spine as he finally gets to her, drags her to her feet by grabbing a fistful of her hair, and holding her in place.

“ _Peter,_ ” she tries again, but he’s not listening. He’s released the clump of her hair – but his fingers have gripped her wrist tight, and he’s dragging her back, ignoring her protests, her clawing at his arms – even as she draws blood.

Once they make it past the town line, he suddenly whirls around, and takes both wrists in his hands, in a bruising, cruel grip, and he leans towards her.

“Don’t leave me all  _alone_ ,” he says, sneering at her. “You’re  _staying_ , Wendy, Wendy Darling – you’re _mine_. Did you forget? Did their little  _rescue_  make you think that you were  _free_?”

He sighs, but doesn’t let go – doesn’t step away, and she’s speechless – fear is pounding through her veins, like a poison, slowly spreading throughout her body. Something that feels a lot like despair – a feeling she’s tried to quell for years, because she had some sort of hope in Neverland, but now – but _now_  –

“Come along,  _darling_ ,” he says, pulling her towards the town, still engulfed in green smoke, and she chokes back as sob.

_He’s won, he’s won, he’s won. The King has won the game._


	78. Sing Me a Song (originally posted on Dec. 29th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Prompt! Peter wants Wendy to sing him a lullaby (or tell him a story. you pick~)"

Wendy frowns down at Peter as he takes up the space of her entire bed by sprawling out lazily. He grins up at her, not looking the least bit tired. The rest of the Boys were, though. They’d had been asleep before their heads had met the ground beneath them.

"Sing to me, Wendy," Peter says, "and I’ll leave you alone for the night." There’s something dark in his expression, something Wendy misses.

Something she should have  _seen_.

Wendy scowls. He knows she only sings for her brothers; she told him as much. And now, now he won’t stop  _bothering her_  about it. He’s trying to see how much of the Wendy her brothers know and take it for himself, till there’s nothing left of her for them to know (because she’ll be all  _his_ ).

"Go away," she says. Her voice drips with exhaustion; Peter had made her go on one of those silly (boyish) adventures that he always makes the Boys go on. She’s bathed, she’s changed her dress (she’s surprised he hasn’t stolen the new one he’d gotten her yet), and now she was ready to  _sleep_.

"But I want you to sing me a  _song_ ,” he says, nearly whining, but she knows it’s only to see if she’ll do it.

If she’ll hand over another piece of her, a piece that her old life knew, a piece of her that he wants all for himself.

He’ll never stop asking till he has  _all_  of her. And she knows that one day,  _one day_ , he will tire of asking, and simply _take_. That day hasn’t come yet.

So she just shakes her head.

"I’ll just go and spend the night at Tink’s house." The floor isn’t the most comfortable place, but Tink has let her stay there before. If only so Peter can’t find her.

Peter rolls his eyes, but when she turns to leave — he sees that she’s  _serious_  — and his hand snatches her thin wrist before she can take a step away from him. A brief flare of anger ignites in his eyes, but she doesn’t see it.

“ _Sing_  to me.” His voice is low, and the smirk is gone.

Wendy slowly turns her head to look at him, with a heart heavy with dread. Her movements are sluggish — she’s  _so so_  tired — but when she sees the look he’s giving her, she can’t help it.

She tries to run.

He’s sitting up and tugging her to him, harshly, in seconds, and with a soft cry, he has an arm wound around her waist, pressing her back to his chest.

“ _Sing_.”

The day that he’ll simply  _take_  is drawing close. It’s not today, and it won’t be tomorrow. But Wendy knows he’ll get it.

Soon, he won’t be asking.

(she prefers it when he asks. it makes it easier to quell the fear thrumming inside her veins when he gives her a dark look.)

Wendy shakes her head, and opens her mouth, to offer an alternative (what if she tells him a story?), but before she knows it, he’s pulling the hair away from her neck, and his teeth are sinking into the skin.

Not enough to bleed, but there’s enough pressure for her cry out. In alarm, and anger. (how  _dare_  he?)

“ _Sing. to. me._ ”

Wendy chokes out a feeble “no”, even with is teeth in her skin, and she thinks she feels him smile.

“ _Darling_ ,” he drawls, trailing his mouth, teeth still out, to behind her ear, and she jolts. Her nerves are screaming at her, for her to move, to run, as fast as she can, but he’s got her trapped.

(she should have run as soon as she saw him sprawled out on her bed when she entered the tree-house.)

His other arm goes around her, and presses her, tightly, against him. Making it hard to  _breathe_.

"Don’t make me  _make you_.”

Her heart begins to thud loudly in her ears.

In  _fear._

_"Five_  … “

Wendy stiffens, and tries to get away from him, to get out of the cage that his arms have made, but he only holds her tighter.  _Making it harder to breathe_. _  
_

“ _… four_  … “

Wendy shakes her head, trying to wriggle away from him, but her arms are trapped at her sides, and she’s pretty much sitting in his lap, and he’s slowly, slowly, just barely  _choking_  her with her every attempt to escape him.

" …  _three_  … “

A whimper crawls out of her throat, a sound mingled with panic and frustration, mixed with  _fear_ (he  _thrives_  on it), and her heart is pounding loudly,  _so loudly_ , in her ears, but she can feel every inch of Peter that’s pressed against her. She can feel his breath behind her ear, the way his teeth scrape against her sensitive skin every time he speaks, she can feel his fingers digging into her sides as his arms press  _tighter_  against her.

" …  _two_  … “

Wendy tries, in vain, to choke out his name, but it’s too late now. She’s not going to say it, not going to give to him what’s rightly her brothers’.

_maybe …_

_maybe the day has come — the day where he takes._

_and stops asking_.

" …  _ **one**._ ”

His arms release her, unexpectedly, and she’s running out of the tree-house before she can process what just  _happened_ , what  _could_  have happened. Her mind is black and numb with fear and the only thing her body knows how to do is take in air through tear-less, panic-induced sobs and  _run run run_.

Her body knows better than her mind does.

Peter is already after her, yelling out her name in the most dark,  _taunting_  ways she’s ever heard. The way he calls after her, it makes her stomach twist into fearful knots as she  _runs runs runs_  into the jungle, as fast as she can.

The day has come after all, then. The day he gets  _sick_ of asking.

The day that he will simply  _take_  what he wants has  _come_.


	79. Tis’ a Good Night (originally posted on Jan. 2nd, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for walkbynight.

They’ve been going out now for a total of seven weeks. And, somehow, they’ve been able to keep it under wraps. No one in town has given them the fleeting, amused looks they give to the couples in their high school. No, they’ve still got everyone convinced that they hate each other.

But they don’t. Sometimes, they pretend – pretend to, for themselves, for their families – what few friends either of them have – for the town’s sake, the  _pretend_. They pretend they hate each other – because in the beginning, they did. In the beginning, he threw rocks at her. Shoved her face-first into the mud on a rainy day. She’s scratched his arm before, making him bleed.

Since they were small (distant, hazy memories that sometimes don’t feel quite right inside their heads), they haven’t gotten along. When they were tiny little things, it wasn’t so bad, though. It was a mutual dislike they’d used against each other – even when they’d been forced to work together – for school purposes, obviously.

As they grew older, their mutual dislike – it had turned into an ugly, hateful thing – a toxic mess that few could stand to be around. A woman from New Zealand – blond, who seems familiar to them both, at random times – nameless to them – is the mediator; she’s the only who can shove them apart, she’s the only one who has the guts to.

(It’s either her, or Madam Mayor.)

But somewhere along the way – a few days, perhaps closer to a week – after Emma Swan came to town, what they had, had shifted. It had changed – morphed, into something familiar, something they could quite reach out and touch with their fingers – but it leaves her breathless and it makes his blood sing, so they give into it – or, rather, it appears to both of them, that he starts it, and she soon falls prey to the churning inside her gut whenever he scrapes his fingers across her stomach, under her shirt, in a passing moment – or when he corners her outside, in an alcove – away from sight, where they are all alone – and his hands disappear from her view and there are  _everywhere_ , burning as they try and find something to hold onto.

It’s been a while, since they’ve started this – whatever  _it_  is – and every single time they’ve gotten, well, _close_ , something always appears – something always happens, and it doesn’t really make Peter happy.

Well, until all those interruptions pay  _off_.

(It’s  _so worth it_.)

Somehow, they end up in her empty house. It’s too empty, sometimes – it’s just her, and her parents, and sometimes, she thinks she would have liked to have siblings – but Ruby and Grace are her friends, so it’s okay – and there’s Peter.

She lets him curl over her, on her bed. Her parents are out – they’re  _always_  out – and he doesn’t see why he should pass up such an opportunity as this. So he doesn’t.

He shucks off their clothes, he lets his hands wander – hers do, too – they go from his shoulders to his hair as she kisses her senseless – with tongue and teeth and something a little too rough and a bit too familiar. Fingernails dig into smooth skin, hands roam the other’s bodies, and she swears she can feel his heartbeat against her skin.

She thinks that something inside her  _clicks_  when his arms are around him, and, somehow, gets her under the sheets, with her skin already covered in a sheen of sweat and a smirk on his face.

She doesn’t quite notice when he’s first inside of her, because all she can feel is the kisses he’s pressing to her collar bone as he thrusts in and out. His heart pounds in her ears, as her arms wind around his neck, and she seems to be holding on for dear life, as he moves, as she moves  _with_ him (never never  _never has anything felt this good before_ ).

Little noises escape her, as grunts leave his lips – and those little, itty bitty noises are what make his mouth curl up – and he hits a spot, a certain  _spot_ , that makes her  _cry out_ , and her muscles clench and convulse – and, after what seems like too short a time, he comes to a shuddering halt.

They lie there, under her covers, breathing hard. He rolls off of her, but he doesn’t leave. She half expects him to – and he succeeds in surprising her, as he tugs her to him,  _smirking_  – like he’s won the world, all because of the red staining her cheeks and the wonderful soreness inside of her bones, that makes her eyes droop.

“Don’t go to sleep just yet,” he says, leaning over her, taking a lock of her hair, and winding it round his index finger. “We haven’t even started the fun yet.”

Even though her eyes are now closed, she makes a face at him. She lifts a hand, and taps him on the chin with her finger. “No more fun,” she says, silently wondering why it all feels familiar – why her heart hasn’t slowed down yet (and why it feels like there’s something on the tip of her tongue – just out of reach), and she turns on her side. Some part of her feels pensive – the rest of her is singing with a sweet joy that she thinks she’s never felt before.

(He’s not of heaven, most definitely, but with how content she feels, she just might’ve been fooled – if he’d been anyone else.)

Peter sighs, shrugs, and lies back down.

They fall asleep with his arm slung across her waist and his nose buried in the crook of her neck.

They don’t hate each other, like everyone thinks they do. It’s not love, either – but it’s close enough for Wendy fall asleep with a small smile on her lips, and a smirk on his.

(It’s been a good night.)


	80. Wires (originally posted on Jan. 3rd, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based off the song "Wires" by the Neighbourhood.

Cold. Callous. Malicious. Murderous. Insane.

People see him as much, if they haven’t ever met him. When only rumors and stories – both true and false, though it’s hard to tell one from the other – they imagine a tall, looming, hulking figure of a man who’d been dragged into the shadows of the twisted, the cold-blooded ( _he is so much worse than that_ ) – and for those who had been snatched away from a more humanoid sight on life – a more tame, less  _violent_ , view on life for all. For those had been dragged into the Organization – they never come  out the same. Sometimes, they never come  out at all. They never come back to the families they’d been snatched from, and if they do – there was bloodshed.

There is always,  _always_  bloodshed.

But he never had a family to begin with – that’s what tipped people off at the Organization first. A boy, already twisted by his early childhood – dead mother, no father, no other family to speak of – it’s what they tried to look for. They looked for the broken ones, to see if they could train them into natural, cold-blooded killers – and when they couldn’t find any broken boys, young – strong – agile – easily swayed from their line of thinking, easily swayed to dismiss morals – easily twisted into an instrument, something they played, to inflict harm – death – torture – whatever they wanted – on others.

Peter Pan had no one. It’s why he was picked, it’s why he was the best when he was first taken in. He’s still the best – even after everything – and it’s ironic, really – what happened to him.

When he was first taken in, first twisted like a lump of clay into a killer – something tame, before it all went to hell – he was fantastic, at what he did. When he killed, he killed well. He was vicious, he was brutal – he was everything they could have hoped for. He was sent on assignments – assassinations, sometimes sneaky, sometimes blatant – to make a point – for whatever reason – more than any of the other boys they’d taken in, that they’d kept – either from a life on the street, a life in a foster home, or a life in a house that could have turned out for the better. He killed politicians, he killed figure heads – he painted out cryptic messages on the wall with a tight, grim smile on his face. He killed those who were sent after him – by governments, by other people who wanted his head mounted on their wall – he killed anyone he was ordered to, and he killed whoever got in his way.

This was  _before_ , though, before it all went to hell.

The way he treated it – like it was same game, that’s what  _they_  saw – that’s what he wanted to see. But it wasn’t a game to him. He couldn’t treat it like that – not when he was soaked in the blood of someone who’d looked him in the eye, who’d either faced death with such terror he nearly hesitated, or faced the blade or gun in his head with the steel that he could not bear to have underneath his skin, carved into his bones – replacing the fleshy, human parts of him, the ones he had tried to maintained – in vain. Other boys- they saw it as games, as someone begged for their life – as someone told them to  _fuck off and kill them already_  – they boys, all of them, even peter Pan, admired the brave ones, even those who cried, but didn’t say a word.

Those were the hardest to kill.

The Organization was proud of Peter. He always completed an assignment, without a flaw – without slipping up. They gave him a longer curfew than the other boys – even Felix, who was almost even more brutal than he was – they gave him games, they gave him more privileges than the others. He was their best pupil, their greatest weapon – he was what they stood for.

And he still represented them, and their cruelty, and their lack of heart – for lost boys, for humanity, for kindness, for anything remotely human and not robotically cruel – even after everything went to hell.

Before –  _before then_  – he would stay up at night, when he was supposed to be sleeping. He would retch, in the bathroom connected to his room – his own room, he didn’t have to share – he would throw up, sometimes wishing he could die from it. But they’d hardened his body – made it stronger than anyone else’s – but that was their downfall, when it came to the notorious Pan.

He would stay up, with guilt and regret and remorse pooling in his stomach, for all the lives he’d taken – for those who he had harmed, but left bleeding, alive, to be found – for the governments he’d nearly brought crashing down by stealing, by murdering – by doing what the Organization – who’d raised him, who’d raised him to be how he wasn’t really on the inside – raised him since he was a small boy, left in the gutter with blood under his fingernails and dirt on his face.

He would sit in the dark, trying to ward off the urge to claw at the lies that had collected right under his skin, he would try so hard to close his eyes and not see the faces of every single person he’d killed. Even those who’d deserved it – especially those who didn’t. He would cry, sometimes, for the lost lives of the innocent – of those who’d been needed needlessly dead by his hand.

He would sit and wish he wasn’t how he was – wish with all his heart, with a hand over his chest and the other’s fingernails digging into his thigh as he wished he wasn’t a weapon – a soldier – an assassin – no, _just a weapon_  that was malfunctioning in the background, behind the scenes.

He was the best. He will always be the best – the best of all of them, the best the world’s seen – he can kill the best, the fastest, the bloodiest, the cleanest, the slowest – he can do it any way he’s ordered to, right down to the letter – and better.

But while he came to them battered and damaged, it was ironic. They wanted broken boys, broken, lost boys that they could order to kill when ordered – without hesitation, without remorse or regret or guilt. Everyone but him could do that.

It was ironic, because  _they_  broke  _him_.

It had been years since he joined, when he cracked. When he couldn’t handle the body count – when he couldn’t keep track of the names of the people that had died by his hand, by some means – when he couldn’t remember all the faces, when they blurred together, like pebbles in a murky stream you couldn’t see clearly because a) the water was turning too dirty (with the blood he’d spilled for them, because he was told to, because they’d taught him and he had been the best – at everything they’d wanted him to be at, and better), and b) there were too many pebbles to keep track of. They didn’t glisten in the sun, so he could not see them.

He knew they were there, but he could not see. He was blinded. He  _cracked_ , he  _broke_ , because of how they’d tried to wire him – to be a mechanic, killing, humanoid thing. Just human enough to blend in with a crowd – but so much more deadly than anyone around him.

It was in the beginning of winter, and he was in the United States. The Organization had a base there – he’d just killed again – but instead of scrubbing himself clean and finding a quick fuck, to relieve himself of the pressure building up inside of him, he sat on his bed. He did not shower, did not find a faceless girl with a neck sticky with sweat to hide his face in. He sat on his bed, staring at his hands. They were caked in dried blood, dirt under his nails. He knew he reeked of it – knew he would have to throw away his t-shirt, his pants – everything he was wearing.

Not because of the blood stains that might never come out, but because he couldn’t remember the face of who he had killed. He could not remember their name, what they looked like – what they said before his knife had finally slashed across their jugular – so blood gushed out – if they had even said anything at all. He couldn’t remember if it had been a young man, or old woman – if they had been innocent or guilty.

But  _he_  was guilty, beyond redemption. His mind tried and tried and  _tried_  to remember, to try and do whatever justice he could to those he’d killed – to remember them, because he’d been taught, by a mother, who had still been alive at the time, that people should be remembered. Bad or not.

Peter couldn’t remember.

Soon, he forgot the other names. Forgot the other faces. He forgot everything – how’d he killed them, how much blood he’d had to scrub off of his skin in the shower till his skin was red with the rawness of his desperation, to try and remain human – to be as human as little he could, because he was not supposed to _be_  human. Not to anyone – not even to himself.

So he  _cracked_.

(He should have come to them already broken.)

He escaped, in the dead of night, with tear stains on his cheeks, a sob stuck in his throat, guilt and remorse churning in his gut – making him want to be sick.

It had felt like he wanted to grow wires, wires that would spring from the tips of his fingers and wind their way around his throat and choke the life of him because of all he had done.

He escaped, and never came back. Went  _rogue_ , started killing  _their_  operatives – boys he’d known since he the Organization had taken him in, boys who’d known him in the same way – boys who were sent after him, but not just them. He killed others. He hardly cared who they were. He stopped feeling guilty – he pushed all of it down, down to the soles of his feet, so he could stomp on the guilt, the regret, the faces and names and the blood all bled together because of time’s passing and his pain, his yearning to rip out his own heart so he could not  _feel_  anymore – and stomp in it, he did. Stomped until he had no more tears, felt nothing but sadistic glee – the glee he should have felt  _before_  – when he killed again, after he’d cracked. After he’d broken.

The Organization had been furious. They’d been dismayed. Their best example, the best of them, had shattered. He’d hid his humanity from them – what little of it he had left – and now, now they had destroyed it. They had demolished it and, and –

In his place, there was –  _is_  – Peter Pan. He’s not so human anymore. He’s broken – he doesn’t feel, he murders without hesitation – without the remorse he once had. He forgets what had haunted him for so long, since he was a tiny boy – he forgets everything but the kind face of his mother, the mother his father had left for another life – his father, who he had found, who he had  _killed_ , for leaving his mother to die _alone_  – but he even forgets her kindness, her humanity – what good she wanted him to show the rest of the world, even if it broke him.

He remembers her, though he locks her up, in the back of her mind. Because he doesn’t want to feel, not again, even though it’s fucking impossible for him – according to rumors and tales, of his brutality, of his insanity – of his cold, callous, fluid motions when he brought his knife down on his victim. He has turned wild, he is no longer human.

(He will look human enough to look like the one standing next to you, but not enough to  _be_  like you. Not after  _everything_.)

(He doesn’t use guns anymore.  _They_  had made him use guns. Knives where better. Knives showed what little humanity people had left in them. Knives are his teeth – when he smiles – when he grins – knives are the only thing he cherishes, in the sense of actually  _cherishing_  something.)

Others hear of him – but for those who see him, he is a lithe, skeletal boy with long fingers, lusting for bloodshed done by his hand. For those who see him, he is a nightmare, embodied in a young boy – a boy who follows no moral code, no guidelines.

The Organization has never forgiven him – forgiven themselves – for slipping up, as they have – so much, in their ways, that the best of them had been broken, twisted into something he should have been brought to them as (but he’s even more  _worse_  than they ever could have  _hoped_  for).

But others – other governments, other organizations and agencies – they haven’t forgiven them, either. To twist a child into a monster, with a will only to kill on command – it’s a cruel, cruel thing to witness, to deal with – to know of.

It doesn’t matter, though – not to him. Not to  _Pete Pan_.

Because there is no  _fixing_  him. There is no going back to who he once was – who he was never supposed to  _be_.

He kills now, not because he’s ordered to – but he wants to. He  _likes_  it. He didn’t used to – he used to want to rip the hair out of his head by the roots, in the early days – but he does now. He can be found lurking, in alleys, in side-streets, or within a crowd. It’s almost too easy to slip a knife between someone’s rib – to cut their neck without them making a sound – and he’s always gone before somebody screams.

No one can kill him.

No one can catch him.

He thinks of killing as a game – like the boys did when he did not, before  _then_. It’s not right – it’s not human, but it is part of what he is – sadistic, cruel, callous – because he is a monster dressed up as a young man – but, once upon a time, he could have been a young man dressed up as a lost boy.

No one has ever gotten away from him before. He’s never had many opportunities to chase his prey – doesn’t matter who they are, if they start running – so when the opportune moment presents itself to him, he takes it – he takes it with greedy, bloody hands with daggers for teeth and a spiked tongue and a knife tucked in his belt.

(Well, no one except  _her_.)

It’s late one night, and there’s blood dried already under his fingernails. His expression is blank and cloaked in the shadows as he roams through the alleys, the side-streets – looking for a game to play, looking for a torso that’s got a beating heart inside of it so he can slip his trusty blade between the ribs and watch the blood stain their clothes – he’s been restless, because the others – those who are hunting him, those are risking their  _lives_  to find him – to kill him (they’ve all given up trying to capture him because it is  _just not possible_ ).

It’s late, it’s raining, it’s cold – and he’s still bored. Three people dead, and he’s still bored – until he gets a familiar prickling at the back of his neck, the one that feels like the hairs on the back of his neck are upright and at attention. It’s an instinct born into him – from before the Organization – one his mother taught him. _Someone’s following him_.

(She taught him caution. Kindness. Selflessness. Love. He kept the first, out of the five. Threw away the other four, threw them to the ground and stomped out their meanings so he could feel  _nothing_  but bloodlust, boredom – animalistic instincts that surface because he has been  _broken_ , broken by the very people who should have done that  _before_  they turned him into a beast, with sharp teeth – claws – knives – the ability to kill in an instant, with a laugh following their death ringing out in the air.)

He thinks this is quite comical. No one’s been stupid enough to follow him – not since he was still held in the Organization’s clutches. They know better now – but others –  _others_  – they  _don’t_. Not all of them, anyway – not until he brings bloodshed into their place, and he paints their walls and doors  _red_ , and hangs the bones of their own on the ceiling lights, hanging heads on doorknobs and the like – because they all should know _better_  that he is wild, untamable – and a thing twisted beyond belief, beyond  _repair_.

So he humors them, for a while – whoever they are, he can’t tell, but he has to give them credit; they’ve been staying out of side – soundlessly – and he has to admire that, because if it weren’t for instincts, he would be none the wiser.

But then he decides to end the game – his fingers are itching to drive the knife into their throat, because it’s just  _another opportunity_  – so he ducks around a corner, and waits – and waits – but then his hand is around their throat before he can realize what he’s doing and he’s driving the knife in between the bottom two left ribs in a quick, shallow motion – and when his eyes land on the unfamiliar face as the girl cries out, he ends up trapping her against the brick wall.

There is no one around to hear her scream.

It makes his lips curl upwards, as she starts flailing. Her hair is wild from the wind – tangled, curly – and her eyes are wild as she struggled against him, her eyes focused on the knife buried in her body. It looks like she’s trying so  _hard_  not to scream, and, even now – after everything – he still has to admire those who can bite back a scream of pain. It might be foolish bravery, it might be needless courage – or it could be steel, it could be from endurance – but he’s never cared much. Not now, anyway.

She was  _following_ him, after all.

She doesn’t cry, she doesn’t scream, but she claws at the arm holding the knife inside her body. Looking desperate – looking like she doesn’t want to accept her fate just yet – he laughs at her, and twists the knife. She looks up at him and glares, but he sees that her lips is bleeding.

_Scream, girl, scream_.

“Get  _off_  of me!” she sounds indignant, when he doesn’t released her – when he doesn’t take the arm he pressed onto her throat off of her—when he doesn’t rip out the jagged knife. It’s comical, truly, and he laughs again.

( _his mind is like a concrete building with cracks in its sides and the support beams have crumbled and all that’s left is a ruined pile of remains but this boy is a ruin with a **body**  holding it all in one place so nothing slips out and makes a mess._)

He shakes his head at her, amused – because she either doesn’t know who he is, doesn’t  _care_ , or –

The girl has hit him across the jaw before he can think to kill her, to twist the knife – and he’s stunned for a moment – which is just enough for her to shove him away from her. He doesn’t let go of the knife, though, he  _wrenches_  it out of her as her hands go to his shoulders and  _shove, hard_  – and a strangled scream comes out of her mouth. With one hand clamped over the stab wound, and the other bracing her against the wall, she stares at him.

He tilts his head at her, curious. He’s never seen her around before. She doesn’t look quite like someone who should be sent to their deaths – by following him – but she doesn’t look entirely innocent either. She wears thin, black clothes – there’s a scratch on her cheeks, that he didn’t cause, and he can tell that she’s favoring the arm that’s applying pressure to the knife wound.

“Were you sent to kill me?” he asks her, twirling the knife deftly between his fingers, the blade glinting in the streetlamp’s light, his eyes unmoving as they took her in – detail for every detail – even though, if he killed her, he would forget her. Her face would be forgotten. She would just be another corpse. It would only be a drop of blood more on his hands when it came to the number of people he’s killed throughout his entire life.

“Because, you’ve done a fine job so far.”

“Shut  _up_ ,” she hisses at him, a look of annoyance on her face – but then she freezes, and then he realizes that  _she’s_  just realized what she’s just said – which means she most  _definitely_  knows who he is.

Good. He was almost worried he was going to have to spell it out for her.

He doesn’t care who sent her, who she’s working for. She doesn’t look like she has a gun her – and it makes his eyebrows shoot up.

It’s like they sent her after him just so she could get herself killed.

And that took away all the fun he foresaw.

_Pity_.

He turns, to leave her – he doesn’t often leave survivors – but this one is any fun, isn’t worth his time – and he thinks he saw a few people loitering in an alley a ways back.

But then before he knows it, she’s coming straight at him – something flashes, gleams in the streetlamp’s light – and he feels a laugh escape his lips as his hand shoots out and grabs her wrist – twists, and a crack and a scream split the cold night air – and then he’s shoving the knife back in between her ribs, twisting it, and he’s giving her a quizzical look.

The way she glares at him – the way her body shakes –

Oh.

Oh, oh,  _oh_.

He starts laughing, and twists the knife again. “You weren’t  _sent_  after me,” he says, smirking – because how could he have not  _see_ n it before, seen how  _obvious_  it was from the moment he saw her? – “ _you_  sough me out – you  _stupid, stupid girl_.”

She screams, this time, when he twists the knife, suddenly  _deeper_ , but it sounds like it’s more out of anger than pain.

“You killed my  _brothers_ ,” she hisses, blinking back tears – because of the knife, or the snapped wrist – he doesn’t know – “you  _slaughtered_  them, three years ago – and they had done  _nothing_!”

He doesn’t remember her brothers; he doesn’t remember her, he doesn’t remember  _anything_ , and, for a moment, something dark twists inside of him, so he twists his wrist, swiftly, and then he’s yanked the knife out of her, and has slammed her broken wrist against the wall.

Her scream echoes off the walls, but she doesn’t stop fighting. She claws at him, and he laughs. Nobody’s been stupid enough to  _follow_  him, no one thought they could actually  _kill_  him.

“How did you find me?” he asks, his eyes boring into hers. He doesn’t remember doing this with anyone else. But then again, he never does. Sometimes, it feels like the first kill – all over again – with his heart thumping wildly in his chest and his head going light – but all too soon, it feels too natural – with what he can do with one flick of a blade, with one swift motion. He’s done this, though – he doesn’t remember, but he’s looked people in the eye – twisted his knife – till they gave him whatever information the Organization needed – and then he killed them. Slit their throat, and watches as the blood ran down their front.

“I  _followed_  you,” she hisses, “it doesn’t matter, does it?”

She sounds desperate – she sounds scared – and he thinks he’s never gotten so high on someone else’s fear. If this was  _before_ , then he would have regretted every breath he’d took. But it’s not  _then_ , it’s now – and he regrets nothing, he holds no sorrow – because he is  _broken_ , his mind has cracked into itty bitty chunks. His sanity dwindled – what’s left of it is usually ignored.

“Yes,” he says, after a moment, “and no.”

“You’re not exactly  _stealthy_ ,” she spits out at him, and she’s right. He’s never been one to hide. He runs, sure – when he’s close to getting into something he has a feeling he can’t kill his way out of – but he doesn’t hide away in the shadows, like he used to. When he wants to, he’s out in the open with blood on his hands and a mouth full of daggers, for everyone to see. “I saw you – I saw you yesterday.”

He tilts his head. “So – what was your plan, girl?” he asks. (She’s not much younger than he is, though he sees her grit her teeth at this.) “Were you going to kill me, and then happily cart yourself off to prison because you did the world a good thing? Were you going to get revenge for your dear little brothers, to even the score? Could you even kill me, my dear?”

The words rush out of her mouth – angry, flustered, indignant – he’s beginning to want to play  _games_ , games with knives and her blood and the labyrinth of streets that is London during the night, in the worst of times.

“Don’t call me that – I am  _not_  your anything! And I  _can_  kill you, I’d be  _glad_  to—”

He twists the knife, sharply, and he chuckles, once. “You can’t,” he says, tauntingly, “you couldn’t do it.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but then he’s grabbing her unbroken wrist, putting his knife in her hand, and pressing the bloody tip to his chest. “Then  _kill_  me,” he says, leaning closer, adding just enough pressure to break the fabric of his shirt and graze the skin underneath, “if you can kill me _, bird_ , do it. Come on, just push and  _twist_ , there’s nothing to it.”

His eyes glitter down at her, and he can see something in her expression change. Something flickers across her features – just something fleeting, but it makes a smirk grace his lips – it makes his insides curl with satisfaction. It makes him take back the knife, and hold it up to her throat.

“I  _thought_  so,” he says. “But, I’ll give you points for trying.” He doesn’t know that her blood simmers in her veins, that her heart is screaming at her to kill him, when she very well can’t. He doesn’t know anything, really – not as much as he thinks he does. He doesn’t know there’s a bitter laugh resting inside her chest. (He doesn’t know that she’s heard all the  _rumors_ , he doesn’t know that she knew  _exactly_  what she was doing.)

The girl under his knife glares at him, but doesn’t move. “Are you going to kill me now?” she asks.

Peter, for a moment, wishes he remembers her brothers. Wishes he remembered if he’s slit their throats – if he’d gutted them – if he’d left them bleeding out on the floor – so he could do the same to her, but it’s all a blur. There are too many faces to remember. There are too many ways that he has killed – with his knife, with his bare hands – and they all bleed together, in his memory.

It’s what happened when he broken. When they made his mind  _shatter_.

He considers her, for a few, long moments. She’s foolish – stupid – for coming after him with just a knife. Perhaps, she had thought she could get lucky – that all she had to do was think she was being stealthier than everyone else who had tried to take his life – or, maybe she had  _known_ ,  _known with all her heart_  that she wouldn’t get out of this alive.

When he finds himself wondering which one it is – because it can’t be  _anything else_  – he grins at her, all sharp-dagger teeth and barbwire in his mouth, glinting in the light, before he drops the knife, takes a handful of her hair, and smashes her head back against the wall.

He steps away as she falls to the ground. He hasn’t killed her – he’s just rendered her unconscious. He titles his head at her still body, feeling a frown tug at the corners of his mouth. While he’s always liked games, this one is different.  _She_  is different – foolish, like many – but different.

He’s always liked games though. And this?  _This_ , he thinks, as he turns, and walks away (she will wake, she will have a pain radiating from her skull to the start of her spinal cord – one he wants to run his fingers over – with anger flooding through her veins – in less than an hour; he needn’t worry), it’s a  _game_. He expects that he’ll win, with a knife slashing her throat.

But, this is different. This game is going to be different.

He might not know the end to this as well as he thinks he might.

(But it  _will_  end, somehow.)


	81. Even When (originally posted on January 4th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Peter is adamant on marking Wendy everywhere but things get a bit too far for Wendy's liking when he starts to mark her beneath her soiled nightgown."

Wendy doesn’t mind the bruises on her waist at first, the darkened patches of skin he leaves behind, with scraping teeth, with blunt nails, with clumsy, greedy lips. At  _first_.

 She doesn’t mind them so much, but when they start to multiply — when he starts leaving them on the inside of her thighs, behind her knees, on her hips, on her neck — she tells him, one night, when he’s about to put his head between her legs — because it’s been a few days, since he’s had the pleasure of seeing her come undone, because of a few, fluid tricks of his mouth, his teeth, his tongue — to stop leaving  _marks_.

(She was never told what the proper name for those were.)

Peter cocks and eyebrow at her. It’s the first time she’s complained, vocally, about them, but he doesn’t see a problem with it.

No one’s looking up her dress, except him, so why should that bother her?

She tells him that he’s going too far.

He bites the inside of her thigh,  _hard_. Viciously. She shrieks, and his mouth is at the apex of her thighs.

The night passes, with her muffling her mewls, cries, and screams into her hand, and she only remembers what she told him when he’s about to leave.

She threatens to push him into one of the lagoons if he doesn’t stop biting her, if he doesn’t stop  _marking_  her.

(He doesn’t end up leaving her tree-house till dawn, because of that.)


	82. Mostly Mine (originally posted on Jan. 4th, 2013)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thealchemistsdaughter: "Prompt: Peter insists on sleeping in the bed with Wendy, even when they've been fighting, because that's what Mothers and Fathers do."

"It is  _not_  what Mothers and Fathers do,” Wendy snaps at Peter, as he slings an arm around her waist and yanks her to him, even though she lies.

"Of course it is," he tells her, moving her hair away from her neck, so he can press his lips to the base of her spine, his nose moving the collar of her gown away.

(Tonight is not a night where he can rip it  _off_  of her. Sadly.)

He’s been pestering her, for the past few days. They haven’t spent the night together since three days past — because she had defied him, in front of his Lost Boys. She had spoken outright against him, with her chin lifted, and had walked away.

He’d thrown her into a lagoon for that.

And for that, she had refused to see him. Hadn’t come out of her tree-house, even when he threatened to burn it down. So he had come in, three days later. He was sick of it, sick of her fighting when it was obvious that he would  _win_  (even if she was  _right_ ), no matter what.

He had slung himself over her, taken up a large portion of the bed, so she would have no choice but to share, to remain close to him, or else, she would fall onto the floor.

Now he lies there, his fingers itching to hike up her dress, his insides twisting on just  _imagining_ what he could do, with her cages in, right here, right now, but her harsh words of defiance distract him.

So his fingers and their nails dig into her skin until red crescents appear on her dress (on her hip), makes her bleed until she tries to struggle away.

"It’s what they do," he insists, even though his knowledge of this is hazy at best and he truly doesn’t know what  _mothers and fathers_ do if they have a spat.

He doesn’t care, though.

Because it’s what  _he_  does.


	83. Victory Tastes Like Her (originally posted on Jan. 5th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Prompt: peter eats wendy out for the first time (make it insanely smutty)"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been over a year since i wrote this and i'm still reeling from the fact that barely-fifteen-year-old-me was capable of writing any kind of smut.

Wendy has been avoiding Peter since their first – well,  _fuck_ , as he put it, in the jungle – in the grass and mud. Her cheeks had been stained scarlet for two days after – she couldn’t look him in the eye, she couldn’t be around him without remembering – remember warm, roaming hands – remembering how he’d seemed to cut into her in the most  _delicious_ way – remembering how he’d come to a shuddering halt with a final buck of his hips – and then his fingers hand wandered up her dress, crawled inside of her – had stayed still, taking their time in getting  _used_  to the feel of her – before he had them  _twist_  and _turn_  till he had her screaming his name into the night.

He doesn’t like that she has. What they’d done – he hadn’t done it before, because it seemed like such a  _grown up thing to do_  – but it had felt  _good_  – almost better than a death at his own hands – and possibly just as satisfying as a victory won against Wendy – and he  _had_  won, when he had made her come undone in his hand, when she had slumped against him, breathing his name out with each exhale.

He wants her back in his arms – he wants to fuck her till she screams again, because that –  _that_  is the greatest victory he’s come across to date. All the other games? They  _pale_  in comparison, to the sense of victory he gets when he  _feels_  her muscles clench – when he  _hears_  her stutter out his name with crimson-colored cheeks.

Peter knows the game has forever changed with her – and he’s okay with that. At first, he was mad, because she made him  _feel_  – it was  _her_  who made something coil up inside of him when he was buried deep inside of her, it was  _her_  who he was content with forcing to stay on the island – because he can see it in her eyes, that this is not just a  _game_  anymore to her, either. He sees it – wants to use it for himself, because of  _this_  – this  _desire_ , to  _have_  her in every  _possible_ way he never imagined he could.

And now he can.

But she’s been avoiding him – for nearly four days now. His insides have been  _burning_  for her. He wants to  _feel_  her, he wants to make her  _wail_ , he wants to feel her tremble and shake underneath him, like he had in the dead of night among the trees, in the grass and mud. He wants to  _see_  her eyes roll back into her skull, knowing full well that that is  _his_  doing, with every delicious jolt and thrust of his body.

And he hates it. Hates her for avoiding him – for doing this – so he decides to take it into his own hands. He sends his boys away – sends them on a trip, puts Felix in charge of it – send them on some sort of  _treasure hunt_ , because that’s what  _lost little boys_  like to do, isn’t it? He makes them go away, just after the sun sets, and the cool dankness of night settles over Neverland.

He finds her, in her house, curled up on her side, facing away from her window. She’s not sleeping – he can tell – especially when she sits bolt upright on the bed. Her nightgown is bunched up a little higher than her knees, and his eyes – they lock onto her legs, her knobby knees – and  _remembers_ , that if he goes  _just a little higher than her thighs_ , he can make her  _burn_  for him.

Wendy can see what he wants on his face. Too late, does the snarl cut her features into something amusing, to him, as she shoves her dress down  her knees, so the hem hangs above her ankles as she is about to spring up and march right past him – right to the mermaids, if she has to, because she is full of  _embarrassment_  and  _shame_.

(He should not have been able to  _unravel_  her as he’d done, so easily, with a few twists of his skeletal fingers, with his mouth hovering over the base of her spine – with his mouth on the shell of her ear, murmuring his name and just how  _good_  she feels and how much  _longer_  he’s going to keep her – all for himself – on the island.

(But what, pray tell, can be longer than the eternity she knows he has planned for her?)

But he’s already there, placing his hands on her shoulders and pushing against them, so she sinks against the mattress – eyes wide with fury, cheeks stained red as memories flash before her eyes. He grins down at her, looming over her like a hunter that’s just about to devour his prey – when he kisses her. He kisses her  _hard_ , with teeth, with tongue, with bruising lips, till she’s gasping for breath – till he’s taking the air from her lungs and  _reveling_  in the fact that only  _he_  can do it, that only  _he_  can make her back arch just so when his hands dig into her hips.

When he knows it’s going to take a moment – for the scathing remarks resting on her tongue, waiting to be spat out of him – he scoots down on the bed, away from her. Her gasping makes him smirk – and he makes a promise to himself, to make sure that  _he_  is the only one who can literally steal the breath from her lungs away – to prove that she is  _his_ , even as she weakly tries to move away from him, a hand resting on her chest as it heaves up and down.

His hand goes up her dress, grinning, skimming over the smooth flesh of her inner thigh – and when she jumps, as fingernails scrape lightly against her skin, he grins – and his grin morphs back into a sinister, arrogant smirk as his fingers find something  _warm,_ something  _already_ wet. If he touches her here – as he learned a few days ago – her body jolts, of its own accord. It’s one of the most amusing things that’s come out of this – well,  _whatever_  it is that they’re doing. He plans on making her scream – pounding her into the bed till she won’t be able to stand the next day – but when one finger slips inside of her, he gets curious. Curious about  _her_ , her anatomy – and he wonders just  _what_  he can  _do_ to her.

She hisses at him, when he flings the dress away from her knees, his other hand and its fingernails trailing lightly over the inside of her thigh – watching her quiver, watching her bite back moans – but that won’t  _do_ , because he ordered the boys away so he could  _hear_  her – so he could  _prove_  that he’d won – so he could just rub it on that he would  _always_  win these battles that they’d had.

His fingers start prodding – rubbing – slithering about. His eyes aren’t on the apex of her thighs, though – they’re locked on her face. She’s gripped her dress, her knuckles are bleeding white, and she’s looking intensely up at the ceiling – she swallows hard, and he crooks his finger, unexpectedly, suddenly,  _sharply_ , inside of her. He sees her eyes widen, and a mewl escapes her mouth before her hand can clamp over her lips.

With her mouth covered, she glares at Peter. He crooks it  _again_ , and he hears something – behind her hand – and he sighs, sitting back on his heels, for a moment – thinking – watching her – wondering what he can do – before –

“ _Go away_ ,” she hisses, beginning to scoot away from him, propping herself on her elbows –slowly – and he tilts his head at her.

Wendy’s cheeks are crimson. It’s like all of this – every little quiver of her body – every little sound she makes that she tries to muffle – it’s like it’s all a secret. And if it is, it’s a secret he wants to know, because it’s obvious that she is  _embarrassed_ , and he’s still new to this – but so is she.

Pounding into her can  _wait_ , he decides, grabbing her skinny ankles and dragging him to her. He has _another_  thing in mind.

She protests, weakly – but then his head is edging closer, and he’s slowly twisting two skeletal fingers inside of her. With every turn, with every  _twist_  – she moans just a bit louder, her breaths get a little raspier – and her eyelids flutter.

He wants to see her eyes  _roll back into her skull_  before he’d  _done_  exploring, though. This – it isn’t enough, he won’t be satisfied till he’s confirmed – for the both of him – that he is  _King_  and that he has _won_ , even though there will be many battles to come ( _he won’t let her go long without fucking her it just feels too good to let something like that go_ ).

When he does something – making his middle and index finger to a quick flip, turn, and twist – quick, fluid movements, unlike what he’s been doing since he came to the tree-house – and her hands go and clutch the sheet, and she arches her back off the bed, enough for her gown to drape down – enough for a breathy, needy sound to pass her lips, he has a pretty good idea of what to do.

He starts twisting his fingers, quickly – in different directions, in jerky, swift movements, with his other hand hooked around her knee until she is a shaking, pleading,  _writhing_  mess beneath him, with a sheen of sweat on her forehead, visible in the moonlight that streams from the window. He looks closer – at what he’s been slipping his fingers into (with so little movement he has begun  _unraveling her and he is drunk on the power this gives him_ ), he presses a kiss to the inside of her thigh, where the limb meets the rest of her body.

The sudden jolt makes him smirk into the skin, and his mouth travels a bit to the left, still curious – with her breathing  _Peter Peter Peter_  into the cool night air that has sifted into the room – and when he starts moving his lips, exploring (she tastes  _good_  but  _strange_ ), she bucks her hips – and his hands clamp over the hip bones, while he smirks into the place – the secret place that’s now not so secret. He looks up at her, and sees that her hands are twisted into the sheets, her back is still not touching the bed, and her eyes look dangerously close to disappearing into the back of her eye sockets. His tongue darts out – and the way she jolts, the way she claws at her sheets – it only encourages him.

Hadn’t she been telling him to  _go_  just a minute or so ago?

He starts to pull away, but then she’s gasping his name. “No, no,  _don’t stop,_ Peter.” She’s beyond caring that she’s lost this battle (like he wants her to lose  _every battle_ ), and her words – the way she’s clenching her teeth – it makes something curl at the base of his spine, and then he starts  _scraping_  – with his teeth, with his tongue, with his lips – clumsily, though – at the mound of flesh under his mouth, between her legs, and something caught between a mewl and a scream escapes her lips. Soon, she starts sobbing – sobbing for something he knows he can give her – and, oh,  _he intends to_.

It is music to his ears, and this only encourages her – so he kisses her, violently – but not quite like he would kiss her mouth. It’s a different game – a different battle, with different weapons, different techniques – but his unpracticed ones seemed to be doing well, because when he scrapes his teeth over a tiny little bundle of flesh – she  _screams_ , and her body clenches – he sees the muscles ripple – and he sees that he’s pushed her  _far, far_  over the edge – but he doesn’t stop until she’s stopped sobbing, till she’s done shaking and moaning and crying out his name – and when he pulls away, she stays where she is.

When Peter pulls away, still between her legs, he sees that she’s breathing slow, now – her breath still hitches, and her eyes are glazed over. Wendy’s cheeks are red – but not as red as they had been the _first_  time she’d been shoved over the edge – and this makes his smirk reveal a mouth full of daggers.

Wendy starts to pull away, sluggishly, but he only drags her back to him. “Round two,” he says, his eyes glinting – satisfaction rippling throughout his body, making his blood  _sing_  – and when she starts to shake her head, in weak protest (she feels like that would be  _too much_ , too much feeling from the tips of her toes to the roots her of hair, but he does not  _care_ , he is  _drunk_  on this, on this newfound way to _win_ , to reduce her to a writhing, sobbing mess) he leans in close, curls his body over hers, till his mouth is at her ear.

He can taste her on his tongue, in his mouth, and she tastes sweet, like  _victory_.

“I  _win_ ,” he reminds her, his teeth scraping the shell of her ear ( _he does not miss how a shudder seems to slip slowly down her spine_ ), “so, I say,  _again_.”


	84. Down by the Shore, You’ll be greeted by your King, and High on the rocks, sits his Queen. (originally posted on Jan. 9th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based off a post which no longer exists, apparently.

When Killian Jones steps onto the shores of Neverland, for the second time, with a hook for a hand, and a forever-changed heart, he is greeted, once again, by Pan. The death of his Milah and his thirst for blood – the thirst of the blood of the monster that had taken his Milah from him, that was quenchable only by revenge’s cold doings – is fresh in his mind as he steps ashore. His crew waits for him, onboard the  _Jolly Roger_.

He knows better than to bring them all at once.

It’s strange being back – everything looks the same, and yet, it looks like things have shifted, somehow. The green of the trees is darker, the air is taut with something he can’t identify – and he wonders if Pan is alone on the island, because it certainly feels like a different presence is also in Neverland. He’s not exactly why he’s here; his mind is clouded with ill judgment and anger – anger and a want for revenge – but he forgets it, when the boy steps forward, holding his arms out, with a grin on his face.

“Welcome  _back_ ,” he says, “did the water  _work_ , then?”

He is reminded of his brother, then and there, but he says  _nothing_  about it. He does not spit out the words he wants to, because he knows better.  _This time_. (His teeth clench, though – and he wonders if Pan can hear them grinding.)

“What do you want, Pan?”

Pan laughs at him, and tells him that he can get him what he wants – in due time (though, deep down, he knows he probably won’t hold up his end of the deal) – but he ends up striking a deal. He’ll do dirty work – he’ll do whatever errands Peter wants him to (well, he doesn’t necessarily  _plan_  on doing that, but Peter doesn’t have to know  _that_ ) and in return, he will be released from Neverland – in time – along with minimal harm done to his crew.

“I have one rule, though,” Peter says, before Killian goes back to his ship. “Don’t touch what’s  _mine_.”

Killian raises an eyebrow.

The Pan smirks, and jerks his head to the left, and his eyes follow the movement – the rockier part of the beach, some distance off. He can make out the shape of a girl – he can see the fluttering dress in the light, cool breeze sifting through the trees of Neverland.

(It’s not yet dark. The land still looks – well, not  _sinister._ Not like it will.)

_So Pan is not alone_.

He can see wild, tangled hair, he can see the girl hunched over something, couching on the rocks. He can’t see what she’s doing, but at once he wonders what she’s here for. If she’s actually here because she wants to be, and  _why_  – long ago, it was just  _Pan_. Now? Now, here was some girl – a girl whose face he can’t see from this distance.

But when he looks at the Pan’s face – when he catches the way the Neverland-born  _devil_  looks at her,  _is_ looking at her, as she sits down, clumsily, and hunches her shoulders, so all he can see is the arch of her back dressed in white.

“I am  _king_ , of Neverland,” the Pan says, making Killian took at him. His words are chilling – no longer jesting, no longer deceitfully light. “And if you touch _her_ , I – well, do I have to tell you,  _captain_?”

_Don’t touch the Queen._

_Don’t touch the King’s Queen._

Killian can grasp the meaning, even though the boy doesn’t say it – not outright. He nods – agreeing (still wondering about the girl), before turning back. He’s struck a deal with a devil. He’s probably just created a trap for himself – one only the ruler of Neverland can set him free of – him and his crew – and all he has room for in his mind is revenge against Rumpelstiltskin.

_But who is she?_

_Who is the Queen?_

_(The King’s Queen? The keeper of the devil’s heart?)_


	85. All these Crimson Stains (originally posted on Feb. 8th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> i called this a "little serial-killer-ish au". it's actually just a mess.

He starts hearing voices when he is eleven years old.

It’s not anything unusual. He almost mistakes it for his own thoughts, at first, as he sits, hunched over, at the edge of the park, hidden away on a soggy, cold bench. The rain has been falling for minutes now, and he’s drenched to the bone.

(But he’s too busy listening to notice.)

It’s not him, though. He learns that, after a few hours, of just sitting, and nodding, and murmuring softly to himself. He doesn’t notice that his lips are turning blue, or that other mothers tugging their children away, towards the bustling city of New York, are giving him concerned looks.

The voices aren’t very nice.

They whisper to him, when the silence is supposed to be soothing, late at night, as days pass into the weeks, and weeks, slowly, at a snail’s pace, to be exact, into months. They tell him things, horrible things, things no boy of twelve should here.

(He doesn’t tell his mother, she wouldn’t care either way.)

They tell him that he should slit his neighbors’ throats. Because they’re horrid, wretched older folks, who smell of gin and look like they’ve been getting high, pinpricks from needles and dried blood still visible on their forearms. They don’t like him. The voices tell him to  _kill_ , but he’s not evil. Not a killer.

So he sneaks out around his thirteenth birthday. The voices keep him up at night, they slither through the curves and bends in his mind when he tries to go to school,  _if_  he goes. They whisper hateful things, that  _he_ will die one day, that everyone is going to kill him.

(He tells himself over and over and over again that he doesn’t believe them.)

He sneaks out, and walks. He has a knife twirling deftly between his fingers, as he saunters across streets, down sidewalks, relieved that there’s no one around. When it’s like this, the voices are less volatile. (But they are always cruel.)

He sneaks away, far away from his mother and her once-friendly embrace and her dead-inside eyes (she doesn’t care about him anyway), and finds himself passing through a crowd of kids. Kids his age. He doesn’t know them, but someone shoves him. Tells him to get out of the way.

The voices scream in his ears, so loud he winces, that he needs to kill the one who shoved him, who’d sneered at him and had simply forgotten about him as soon as he’d been out of sight.

(Peter runs.)

He runs, until he collides with a girl. Her hair is red, her skirt is short, and she swears at him. Calls him nasty names, and he wants to cry, he wants to make the voices  _stop_ , and they’re so  _mean_ , so when he sticks the knife in her chest, digs it up between her ribs over and over with clumsy motions, with her gasping cries dying on her lips as she falls to the ground only seconds later, he runs again.

(He walks around with blood on him till someone finds him, till someone guides him into a police precinct and sits him down in front of someone because he won’t give them a name or an address or anything. That doctor-someone-something ( _the voices hate him, too, the voices are telling Peter he’s more worthless than the girl he killed, that he’s going to be gutted like an animal for what he’s done and he grits his teeth because they won’t **shut**_ **up** ) asks him questions.

He doesn’t tell him about the voices. He doesn’t tell him about anything. He stares, and stares, until he asks if he can use the bathroom. The shrink (Mother always said those doctors weren’t trustworthy, none of them) says yes, and he escapes.

He goes home, and scrubs the blood of his arms, disposes of his clothes. His mother never noticed he was gone.

He throws up.

(He kills again, two months later. The voices were screaming at him, to do  _something_  with his life, or else they’d find a way to claw at him, to spill his organs from the inside, to let them all come out in a heap on the ground so everyone could  _walk_  all over them because Peter Pan is  _worthless_.)

In the next few years, he kills. Easily. Slipping the knife between thin ribs, or through their back, or near their spine. It gets  _easier_. The voices are never satisfied, though. All they want is for the world to be stained with blood, and he has to be the one color it red, red,  _red._  He has to be the one to do  _everything_.

(He’s stopped crying about it. He doesn’t retch anymore.)

When he is sixteen, he sneaks out. Mother never notices him anymore. She stays in her room, passed out, with whiskey on the nightstand. It doesn’t matter ( _bother_ ) to him. The voices would have him run away if she stuck around and tried to mother him like she should have.

(Maybe she could have helped him. But when he starts thinking like that, the pounding in his head gets worse. So he doesn’t. Can’t think like that. Can’t imagine what it would have been like to be a  _cure_  instead of a fatal  _poison_  countless had died from.)

When he is sixteen, he finds himself near a crowd. A party with beer. He hates beer. It smells bad, tastes worst. He tried to drink away the voices, once.

(They’d made him slice into some man’s throat for that, made him paint the brick walls of alley ways with words he didn’t read.)

There is a girl there.

(she seems familiar.)

He doesn’t like girls. Or boys. Or anyone.

They’re all the same.

( _mean_. cruel. not as cruel as the voices, though, no, never  _that.)_

Her name is Wendy. She is not like the rest of them, though.

When she steps outside, to light a cigarette, and inhale the toxic smoke, he doesn’t really mean to join her. In fact, since the voices are telling him to go, he’s leaving. But he sees her, she sees him. And she speaks.

She asks him his name, and he tells her. No one has ever asked him that before. No one, so it’s strange when she smiles and she says “I’m Wendy, Wendy Darling” and his first thought is  _what the fuck kind of name is that_ _._ It’s girly. But when she slides her fingers through his, and stamps her cigarette out with the heel of her boot, he finds that it suits her.

He ends up going to her house. (He likes her. Tries not to think about how he feels he should wrap his fingers around her wrists, shove her up against the nearest wall and call her  _bird_.)

(The voices whisper to him, harshly, they’re like glass scraping at the inside of his skull, but they’ve lessened some. It would be a shame, to kill her. Because she’s different, not like the others. Dare he say, he  _likes_  this girl, this Wendy Darling.)

But they don’t tell him to kill her. The voices, they grow even quieter. As she helps him get his shirt off his torso, when she allows him to lean over her as they lower themselves on the bed.

(Her parents aren’t home. She says they never are.)

Peter fucks her, and when it’s over, when he’s slumped over her, hot and sticky, with her still trying to catch her breath, sometime later, something is wrong.

Off.

The voices are  _gone_.  _Gone_ , and the relief is so sudden that something shoots down his spine, and he plants a kiss on her bare stomach. She laughs, and threads her nimble fingers through his hair. There is something soft, something innocent about her that he likes. That keeps the voices away.

(He kisses her on the mouth, tells her she’s his, and leaves her staring after him with a scowl. He doesn’t know any other way.)

He kills again, sometime later. The voices are screaming, screaming so loudly at him, that he’s worthless, that everyone’s going to kill him, and he’s seventeen now, and he’s starting to believe them, there is so much  _crimson_  under his fingernails and underneath his skin, from every person he’s killed.

(He tries to lose count, but the voices taunt him. Remind him. They only get crueler as he gets older. He hates them. Because he’s killed  _so many_.)

He kills again and again, until he’s running, and turns into a store. The voices are demanding matches. Lighter-fluid. They want a finale, of some sort.

(He wonders if this is the end. He would hope so, but then they’d keep him alive so much longer.)

He’s about to pick up a basket when he sees her.

Wendy.

She’s chewing gum, quite loudly. Her curly hair is pulled away from her face, and she looks thinner. Paler. But suddenly, the voices quiet, and his mind feels at peace.

When he approaches her, she smiles, her eyes wide, and they embrace like they’re old friends.

(They knew each other for one night. Fucked once. But she’s more than that to him.)

He spends the night with her again, and the next day after that. They spend it in her parents’ apartment, they’re never home, and he rests his head in her lap, and he confides in her.

About the voices.

She says that it’s okay. She says she’ll help.

(He doesn’t tell her about all the blood on his hands that she can’t see, and she doesn’t tell him that she wants to run as far as she possibly can from him, from someone she feels she’s known before, in some other life.)

He leaves her, four days later. He finds his mother waiting for him, with a wry smile, but dead eyes. She isn’t actually waiting for him. She doesn’t even seem to see him. So he leaves again.

(It’s not like she’d care. She’s braindead. Crazy, right?)

Peter goes back to Wendy, and the voices only appear once. They whisper to him, that he should paint the walls of her home red with their blood. They leave him with a cold sweat in the middle of the night with her body slung over his under the sheets.

He’s not sure why he stays with her. But there is something familiar about her. It’s like there’s something missing, something he’s supposed to remember about her. And he sees her, when she thinks he’s not looking. He sees her glances, in mirrors. Glances that looked so pained, that make him think that she lost something. Or is waiting to get something back.

(He hears her praying, when he knows, somehow, she doesn’t believe in a God. For something about bringing something back.)

He doesn’t understand it, but she is stability. If only temporarily.

When Peter is eighteen, he has been with Wendy since then, since he’d left his mother to rot in her own apartment, and he has killed sixty-six people. He gets caught, killing number sixty-seven.

By Wendy.

She sees him slit a man’s throat, she hears him yelling at the voices in his head. And she runs. Runs, and calls the police. And he chases her, because there is something  _familiar_  in her terror, in the way that she’d looked at him, with something like  _disappointment_  and  _horror_  and something else he couldn’t name etched into his features, with blood stains on his skin and clothes and a wild look in his eyes as men in blue with guns grab him. Drag him away.

He is diagnosed with something he cannot bother to remember the name of, and the courts, after a while, ship him off to some asylum.

He doesn’t see Wendy again, not for a long time. And when he does, they are both in their late twenties. They’ve got him on medications, meds that make him feel like shit, but there aren’t any more voices. And Wendy’s tight smile and open arms are familiar, in a place of white walls, pushy orderlies, and pretentious lawyers.

(Apparently, just because he’s crazy, doesn’t mean he can’t drive everyone else insane. If he’d been different, he would have been a different man.)

Wendy looks different. There is something terribly, terribly wrong with her. She looks like she’s been crying, like her skin is stuck to her bones.

"Peter."

Her voice cracks.

"Peter, come back."

He doesn’t understand. He stands, takes a step towards her, and she shakes her head at him. “What?”

"Wake  _up._ " Her lips tremble, and he takes a step forward. "You are  _cursed_ ,” she says, looking like she wants to cry. (She does. He can tell. But she’s being strong, he can tell, because her chin is up. But her hands are  _shaking_.)

"What?" He doesn’t understand.

"Regina," Wendy says, urgently, and people are looking at her funny now. But she ignores them.

(Like they’re not real.)

"She did this to you, she took you  _away_  from me, because  _you_  took  _her_  curse away. You’re  _asleep_ , Peter Pan. My Peter.”

Peter sees her heart break in her eyes.

Something cracks inside of him.

"Wake up, I’m here to get you out, I’ve been trying for so long, please, come  _back._ " she pleads, but the room is spinning, and he doesn’t understand. She’s screaming now, rushing towards him, but it’s too late. His head hits the corner of a white table, stained with paint, and pain blossoms in his temple as darkness takes him.

He dreams of a room full of people he doesn’t know. A blonde woman stands over him, looking grim. He knows her, he doesn’t like her, but she keeps saying “come on, Pan, come  _on_ " and there’s some other woman wearing some ridiculous (fairy-tale?) out fit that makes him think of a fairy. He dreams that he hears crying, that someone in a white dress and crimson robe is curled up in the corner, her face in her hand, but she is still. Un-moving. He tries to call out to her.

But he cannot speak.

(He wakes up in the mental ward, strapped to the bed. His therapist tells him that no one came to visit. That there is no woman named Wendy Darling. They checked. Once he’s alone, he doesn’t cry. Doesn’t speak. He cannot speak at all.

(he didn’t wake up.)


	86. And You Were Gone (originally posted on Feb. 8th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for robbiekay2k14, for a post which no longer exists.

No one knows why, but Peter leaves, one day. He doesn’t say a word; he’s up and gone in the morning, and it seems that not even Felix was notified about his absence.

He’s never left before.

Felix tries to take charge, but it had been a bad night for Wendy. She hadn’t slept a wink, some ache had settled in her bones, and she’d stared up at the jungle’s canopy while lying on her back outside, because the treehouse had seemed to small.

(too many walls, perhaps.)

There’s something off, in the air, and it makes Wendy go up to him and jab her index finger into his chest. She tells him that  _she_  is going to be taking care of things, because, obviously, as a  _boy_ , he has no clue as to what he should do.

She tells him to go, to check on the pirates she’d seen the afternoon before. It had been raining, and it’s now been a week since the pirates’ ship had anchored off the shores of Neverland.

(Peter doesn’t like them. hasn’t approached them, yet, but he doesn’t like them.)

So he does. (Because if they sneak into their camp, somehow, or at least come across it, on someone’s watch, then  _that_ person will get their throats slit.)

Wendy gives the boys various tasks. She sends them away in threes and twos, sometimes for an adventure, other times to make sure there’s no spy lurking in the trees.

(Because Peter has been glaring off in the direction of the anchored ship. They have yet to leave it, but he still doesn’t trust them. He’s waiting, waiting for something. For what, no one knows.)

Wendy finds herself running back and forth, across Neverland, guided by several Lost Boys at a time. It’s busy, but it works, and she makes sure there is no pair of eyes where there shouldn’t be, and when Peter comes back, he looks amused.

And tired.

He mutters something about a curse, and barely even notices that she’s done a fine job of keeping everyone calm and moderately happy. He registers it, but before she can get a word out, he’s nodding to Felix and dragging her away, towards the tree house.

(She bites him for this.)


	87. This Isn’t Even a Real Holiday (originally posted on Feb. 14th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> written for valentine's day.

Wendy chews her lip thoughtfully, looking at the display of heart-boxes full of truffles and chocolates for sale while Felix reads the card over and over in his hands, his brow furrowed, his lips pulled down in a frown.

"She’ll love it," she assures him, after a moment, for what has to be the hundredth time since they came into the store, on a mission to get something for Tink. Who, like Peter,  _abhors_ Valentine’s Day. (He still does things for her though. Well, not traditional things, anyway.)

Felix’s eyes flicker doubtfully to her, and she smiles.

"It’s the thought that counts, just remember - "

Her phone rings in her pocket, and she doesn’t even know have to guess who it is, because the jazz song with trumpets and saxophones blaring out from her phone tells her  _everything_.

Rolling her eyes, she pulls it out of the her pocket, flips it open, and holds it to her ear.

Peter’s squawking into the phone before she can get a word out.

“ _Wendy_ , Tink says you and I are going to watch  _The Princess Bride_. We watch that  _every year_. Can’t we watch something else?  And  _don’t_  suggest a disney movie. Just.  _don’t_.”

Wendy laughs.

"Peter - "

"I mean, I love the plot line, don’t get me wrong, but we’ve seen it  _a lot_.”

"You saw it four times!"

"You made me."

She sighs. “Peter - “

"And where are you?"

"I - "

"Aren’t you supposed to be watching this corny movie with me?"

"I thought you didn’t want to see it."

"Neither did I."

Felix raises and eyebrow, and she mouths the words “oh my god” at him before rolling her eyes again.

"I’m with Felix."

"Why?"

"He’s getting a card for Tink."

She hears Peter snort.

"Be kind. It’s the thought that counts."

"All the cards in Storybrooke suck."

“ _Peter_  - “

"I’m just saying the lady mayor needs better ones."

"You - "

"I’m going to start the movie without you if you’re not over here in fifteen minutes."

Her eyes widen, and she frowns.

“ _Peter - “_

He hangs up.

Wendy stares at her phone, for a long moment, and then puts it away. She turns to Felix.

Who can’t keep the smirk off his face.

"This isn’t even a real holiday," she mutters, turning towards the end of the isle so she can lead Felix towards the check-out counter.

"You sound like Peter."

“ _You_  sound like - like - “

Felix laughs.

Wendy fumes.

It’s all Peter’s fault, naturally. Giving her fifteen minutes and everything - utterly ridiculous.

(She scowls.)


	88. Every Drop (originally posted on Mar. 18th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> asterixgazer: "Hello :) I dunno if you're accepting prompts, but if you are, maybe a darling pan shower? Peter likes his water near scalding and Wendy likes hers really cold? Thanks for your time!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can see the downward spiral of the rate at which i was writing dp fics going a few chapters of this back. kind of disconcerting.

For every time Peter has tried to slip into the shower with Wendy, after rehearsal, she’s always managed to shove him out and away from her. Locks the door before he can even begin to worm his way back in, into the little space where she turns the water to the temperature of the  _snow_  falling outside, when she could be in a perfectly steamy, hot shower.

With  _him._ The woman he fell in love with, really, she has no sense.  _At all_.

But when he comments on this, she peaks her head out the door long enough to glower at him before she slams the door.

And then she opens it a crack, just enough for her to throw an empty bottle of shampoo at him.

He always ducks, and laughs.

Sometimes, though, sometimes, after a long recital, after her feet are tired, and all she wants is to freeze her blood and bones under a stream of water, she forgets to lock the door.

So he slips in - invites himself, if we’re all being honest, and, naturally, before she can yelp, or shove him out onto the floor outside the stall, he corners her against the wall.

But not before turning up the water, so they’re both not  _freezing_  to death.

Because,  _honestly_.

He loves her and all, but.

Wendy has no  _common sense_. It’s utter ridiculous.


	89. You Little Liar (originally posted on Mar. 18th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Prompt where Wendy says she hates him, but Peter knows that's not true because of all the small things she does that let him know she cares/loves him, even if she doesn't know it!"

The words she spits out are meant to be venomous. They are mean to  _sting_ , to make him wince; they are spoken out of a temporary spite, because he took it one step too far, this time. He stepped over the line,  _far over it_ , and her anger is boiling over.

He laughs, though. Laughs right in her face.

Because he knows, Peter  _knows_ , better than anyone, that she spits out lies. That the trembling in her fists, it’s all going to fade, soon. She doesn’t hate him. She  _can’t_  hate him.

Regardless of whether she knows it or not, he knows she  _loves_  him - loves with all of her heart, and she’s showed him in so many ways before. He knows; it’s not like it’s very hard to figure out, and he’s wondering, right then, inside an empty house, if she knows it.

No, he thinks, while her voice shakes her fingers flex. Her eyes are alight with an angry, slow-burning fire, one he’d like to douse by resting his hands on her hips and his mouth on hers, because, well, that always shuts her right up. It’s like it reminds some part of her, the part that hasn’t told the rest of her that she loves him, loves him more than she ever loved those boys Neal or Edward or anyone else.

At times, he wonders what it would be like, to just  _tell her_ , tell her what some part of her ( _her beating heart_ ) already knows. He wants to see the realization dawn on her face, he wants to see her eyes go wide, her lips to part into an ‘o’ before she flings herself at him, with fists that beat against his skin. That don’t leave any pain behind, because she can’t  _truly_  hate him.

Her voice is becoming shrill. It’s getting on his nerves; she  _needs_  to shut  _up_ , or, God help him, he  _will_ tell her, at this very moment, what she’s probably been dreading to hear (to  _admit_ ) since, well,  _forever_.

And so he does, Peter  _does_  shut Wendy up. He grabs her, by the lapels of her jacket. Yanks her to him, and their mouths clash. He doesn’t give her a minute to breathe, he only pushes her up against the wall, slides them into the doorway of her bedroom, and propels them to the bed.

__________________________________

He never tells her that she loves him, because, in the end, it’s worth waiting for.

It’s on a rainy night, and she’s started yelling at him again.

He can tell, because, when she’s in the middle of a sentence, in the middle of telling him just how  _much_ she hates him, she just - she just  _stops_.

Just like that.

Her eyes go wide. Her lights are pressed together, into a thin line, and she takes a step back.

Wendy opens her mouth, to say something - to say everything - but then she turns, and she does what she’ll always do. In every life. Every time.  _She runs_.

And Peter.

Peter does, what he’ll always do. In every lifetime, every chance he gets, with satisfaction oozing from his pores. Shining in his eyes, as sharp as the smile that graces his lips.

_He chases her_.


	90. There’s Blood on my Hands like the Blood in You (originally posted on Mar. 23rd, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> kinda sorta a worrior au.

Smoke rises from the burning houses of the houses in the village, set in the valley behind the running creek. War cries and hoarse screams reach Wendy’s ears as she draws the string of her bow back.

Snow falls into her air, in beg, wet flakes, and her eyes move over the remains of the village they’re trying to take back before she takes her aim, and lets her arrow fly.

The boy with blood and black warpaint smeared on his cheeks, dripping from his lips and his hair, falls to the ground before he realizes the arrow has pierced through his chest.

The knife he’d been holding rolls out of his hand. It’s shines in the dull light with the blood of those who he has killed, and Wendy has to shift her vision, to find another target on the move.

She’s about to draw another arrow when she feels a knife at her throat, smooth and cold, and she knows who it is, even before she feels lips at her ear and the ghosting of his breath on her skin. She jerks her elbow backwards, swings herself out and under from his arm, and spins away from him.

Peter is laughing at her. He’s got blood smeared across his hands, his mouth, his cloth-covered chest. War paint is smeared up and down his arms, smudged and sloppy, while hers is neat and clear, in blue and black ink.

"I almost got you," he says, lunging at her, and before she knows it, his hands are around her throat and they’re tumbling out of her tree. When her back meets the ground, the wind is knocked from her lungs, and he takes this at an advantage to lean over her as he sits on her stomach.

She’s struggling to get the knife that’s pressed flat against her skin away from her throat. Her bow and arrow, forgotten, lying a short distance away in the mud.

"I  _will_  kill you this time,” she warns through gritted teeth, and he laughs, laughs, and she manages to get her arm free long enough to sock him in the jaw.

"My darling, my darling," he shakes his head, and spits blood on her. "You won’t. You really won’t."

The edge of the blade is pressing into her skin - she thinks that he might actually be cutting into her skin, and she’s about to open her mouth and say something else, something that will distract him long enough for her to shove him off of her and grab the knife from her sheath, at the base of her spine, when a familair face appears behind his shoulder.

"Off you go," Tink chirrup, swinging her arm around Peter’s neck and propelling herself backwards, so they both fall to the ground, and off of Wendy.

"Get out of here," Tink spits out when Wendy gets to her feet, and approaches them, knife in hand, "Go on, get."

Wendy nods, while Peter watches her pick up her bow and arrow with hungry eyes, until he feels something cold slicing into his shoulder, and he lets out a grunt. Blood is soaking through his shirt, and the pain is getting to the point where gritting his teeth would have them snapping in their gums, but he laughs.

"That’s for knocking her out of a  _tree_ ,” Tink hisses.

"Oh, you  _know_  I’d do more than knock her out of a tree before I killed her,” Peter laughs.

The knife goes through his shoulder again. Again, he grunts, and elbows her, elbows her so the air leaves her body, and she is stunned for the right amount of seconds for him to leap up and race after Wendy.

"Great," Tink mutters, sitting up and rubbing her stomach. Mud sticks to the back of her head and she can taste blood in her mouth from where her teeth bit into her tongue from the force of Peter landing on top of her.

"This - this is just  _great_.”

"Oh, you know it is," and before Tink can do anything, a hand is wrapping around her the back of her cloth shirt, and she’s being shoved backwards, so hard she stumbles and nearly falls back onto the grass.

"Felix," she says, and bares her teeth at him, in a wicked smile. Teeth stained with her own blood and hands with the blood of boys Felix and Peter Pan knew.

Glancing over her shoulder, Tink sees that Peter is perusing Wendy again, dashing through the trees, the knife flashing in the dull light of late afternoon. She can hear him laughing from where she stands.

Yeah.

This is going to end  _great_.


	91. Boiling Over (originally posted on Mar. 23rd, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Can you write how pan is really mad and only Wendy can calm him down?"

"Wendy, you need to help us," Felix says. He’s leaned up against a tree, with his arms crossed loosely over his chest.

Wendy snaps her head up to glare at him. “I don’t  _need_  to do anything, Felix.”

Felix rolls his eyes.

"He won’t talk to any of us," one of the other boys pipe up. "C’mon, Wendy, you gotta."

"I don’t  _want_  to,” she spits out.

"Is this ‘cause he was mean to you, Wendy? ‘Cause he only does that when - "

Felix shoots him a look, and the boy snaps his mouth shut.

Wendy looks down to the patterns she’s drawing in the mud with a stick. She’s still damp from when Peter pushed her into the lagoon, lagoon full of mermaids - he wouldn’t drag her out until she’d nearly been dragged under the surface and  _drowned_.

So, she  _really_  doesn’t think that she has to help.

Even if they promised her freedom, she wouldn’t help, not when they all rightly deserved an angry Pan who’s more likely to cut off a limb than listen to any of the boys’ here reasoning. Even Felix isn’t safe when Peter gets like this, gets so mad they can all see it when he sees red.

"Don’t make us make you," one of the other boys chirrups.

Wendy lifts her chin up and scowls at him. She drops the stick in the mud, and leaves her arms at her sides, instead of putting them on her hips or over her chest.

"You can’t make me do anything," she tells them, and walks away.

"You’ll wish you did something," Felix calls after her before, she’s disappeared into the jungle.

He doesn’t miss the way that her steps halt, just for a second, before she stalks away.

He smiles.


	92. Chink in the Gears (originally posted on Jun. 21st, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> premium rush au.

Wendy speeds down the street, ducking taxis and cars and getting yelled at pedestrians, but with the way the summer sun is beating down on her back and the rush of air against her face counteracts it, there’s no way she can stop now. The clock is ticking, Baelfire is saying something into her earpiece about how she always takes the  _worst_  rides to the worst of places. Constantly.

 

Now, Wendy is not the thrill-seeking type. Not generally. The adrenaline rush is something else entirely, she’ll admit, with her braid of hair flying behind her and her skin warmed by the sun and nose whipped by the speed she was going.

She might be a sensible girl, but she’s taking a break from college. The money’s okay, at forty bucks average per delivery. She’s sharing a room with a girl named Tiger Lily at least a dozen blocks away from the dispatch area. Her coworkers are insane, just like people think all the bike messengers are.

But there’s something about this job that makes her blood tingle and a smile tug at the corners of her mouth every time she has a near-miss and somebody else  _almost_  gets screwed over.

Today, she’s got yet another thick envelope in her zipped-tight bag, sling across her chest, over her shoulder. She always seems to take on the same sorts of jobs: money for a criminal, a loan shark,  _whatever_ this guy is. The clients are usually a bit shaky when they hand her the package with the different addresses on it, but she’s beyond worrying nearly six months into delivering the same guy’s loot.

Killian pays her extra on days like this, where she has to race down Broadway and make it to Arnoldson Avenue before three o’clock, when the seconds are ticking by and the pedestrians thin and thicken out as she turns corners, ducks through alleys and parks, and avoids crashing into taxis and dump trucks and parked police cars.

The man she’s always delivering to is a gang leader, or,  _something_  of the unsavory sort. She may not be afraid of his boys when they come to collect, when she skids to a stop right in front of the warehouse door down by the docks and shouts “delivery” in a hoarse huff of breath from the effort to make it there early. All she knows is that the several times she’s seen him, there’s a knife twirling deftly between his fingers and the corners of his mouth are always tugging upwards when his eyes lock on her, before she has the chance to pedal away.

In the few time’s she’s had the misfortune to talk to him, he’s always looking at her like he knows something she doesn’t. Like he’d like nothing better than to slam against her as she tries to get away on her bike and knock her to the ground because while he may be young, he looks  _feral_. In the dark, in the shadows, he looks like something else.

They call him Peter Pan. Killian’s never explained anything to her, Bae has only chided her on the rides down there after she gets back, and Ruby’s always giving her odd looks. Fifty bucks makes her forget about that, after a few hours.

Today, the client hadn’t been shaking. The woman, young, with bright red lips and fierce eyes, had seemed nearly angry as she had waved Wendy away. It was a change. Perhaps a good one, perhaps not, she couldn’t know; Wendy never asks about anything she’s not supposed to, she just speeds down the street, weaving through traffic.

A glance at her watch tells her that she’s nearing two-forty-five. It makes her lean over her handlebars, pedal harder, because she’s never been later than early with Peter Pan, and doesn’t intend to the change that.

Wendy skids to a stop at two-fifty-one, exactly, just as the warehouse door opens and one of his boys, Felix, steps out.

"Right on time, as usual," he remarks, eyebrows raised, as he looms over her. Even in the hot sun of July, she gets shivers racing down her spine, because there’s something  _off_  about Felix, always has been, and she’s never asked after it or wanted to know, so she accepts the tip he slaps in her outstretched palm before she swings the bag off her shoulders, unzips it, and digs out the envelope.

"Delivery," she heaves out in a tired breath, handing it to him. He looks nothing more than amused as she zips her bag pack up, stuffs the crumpled bills in her shorts’ pocket, and turns her bike around.

She’s about to pedal off, when Felix speaks.

"He wants to talk to you."

Wendy freezes. Goes cold on the inside, because, um,  _what_?

Peter Pan?

Wants to talk?

To  _her_?

She wants to refuse. She wants to get up and go as fast as she can back to dispatch, where Killian is probably waiting with another client and the veterans, Wilee and Vanessa are probably there. She likes them. They reek of safety, of having done this before.

But Wendy sights, gets off her bike. Chains it up to the tree near the edge of the sidewalk. Takes off her black helmet as she follows Felix inside, to where the shade provides cool air and an ominous feeling.

She only has to take a few steps before she stops, spotting Peter from where he stands against the wall a ways away from her, even with her eyes adjusting to the lack of lighting. He’s looking at her, like he’s been expecting her, and she’s almost tempted to ask if he just asks for her as a messenger every time, or if it’s just because she’s the least likely to mouth off or do something stupid -

"Wendy-bird," he says, grinning, pushing himself off the wall. He’s a bony young man, with long fingers, and a smile full of sharp, sharp teeth. He is not to be trifled with.

The nickname makes her frown, but instead she asks, “what do you want?”

"A package delivered," he says, as if it’s the simplest thing in the world.

She doesn’t ever pry, but she takes a guess to think that with him, it probably never is.

He holds out something small and square to her. She steps towards him, slowly, and he laughs.

"I won’t bite."

Wendy doesn’t believe him for a moment, but she’s quick to take the necessary steps forward so she can snatch the box, look at the address, and stuff it in her bag. Her heart’s thundering in her ears, her hands are sweaty under her fingerless gloves.

Wilee wouldn’t take it for a thousand dollars, not for a long shot, but Wilee has never met Peter Pan. Although she doesn’t know him well and she doesn’t intend to, the look in his eyes tells her just to take the money he’s holding out so she can get on her way.

"I need this delivered by four."

She checks her watch. It’s nearly three.

"You need to get there a little earlier than that, bird."

Wendy’s frown deepens.

"Why?" she asks, because, um, it’s  _Peter Pan_. But then she realizes she shouldn’t have asked him that, because for all she knows, he’s some kind of monster, and she’s a monster’s dessert, according to Ruby. (Innocent enough to be leered at, but she’s fearless and scornful at the best of times. Firey, but it’s easy to make her back up and make a run for it. Because she’s a bird, that takes  _flight_. Every chance she gets. According to Peter.)

Peter doesn’t reply. He just steps closer, and grins.

It makes her turn and dash out into the sunlight. She unchains her helmet while unceremoniously slinging her helmet over her head before she hops on and begins to pedal away.

But not before Felix calls after her,

"Come back soon."

Wendy gets there in time. Doesn’t ask questions. Does’t stick around. Pedals back to dispatch as fast as she can, because the boys had been given her sneaky smiles, with sharp teeth and she had seen the guns under their shirts and the knives sticking out of their front pockets.

Her cheeks burn, though, despite the anger building up inside her chest, alongside the curiosity and the  _fear_ , when they call after her, “run away, little dove! Fly as fast and as high as you can!”

(Wendy  _hates_  them. Wonders if it’s worth the sixty bucks that’s slapped into her palm by Killian. Ignores the looks from Wilee, Ruby, and even Henry in favor of riding to the apartment. She wonders if she’s going to get hit tomorrow, if Peter has another delivery for her.

Stops wondering, when she parks her bike outside and hurries inside, because wondering has never  _done_ her any good. The last time she wondered, she’d ended up with scrapes on her elbows and Wilee removing the breaks from her bike with a smug look on his face.

And somehow, it seemed like all of it was  _Peter_ 's fault.)


	93. the way we used to (originally posted on Aug. 30th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> based off of "There’s Blood on my Hands like the Blood in You", by yours truly.
> 
> for adrenalizinq.

They have always been at war.

They are nomads, who know the land they trek across better than the back of their own hands. They are a free, vicious people, who have blue smudged in their skin and black paint smeared on their stomachs, their chests, their arms, their faces.

The bluish haze stains their skin. It marks them, announces to the world that they are the natives of this place, that their calloused hands, bare feet, and rough leather and thing cloth over their bodies, to provide maximum movement when in combat, have known this land longer than any other.

They are taught, at a young age, to fight. They give their boys and girls spears, bows and arrows, and knives. They teach them how to bash someone’s head in with a rock, they teach them how to push their thumbs into their enemy’s eye sockets till they scream. They teach them how to kill with their bare hands.

They teach them how to be brutal, how to  _win_.

And if they cannot master a weapon, they are taught other things. They’re taught how to spy—to slip between the ranks of those who come with iron and bronze and sometimes gold and rough cloth. They’re taught how to slip from tree to tree, unseen and unheard. They’re taught how to bend low to the ground in the tall grass, how to run soundlessly through the woods, through the creeks. They are taught how to survive the river, and the occasional bogs.

They are taught how to  _live_  in this world, where children are murdered for crimes they did not commit, families ripped apart by war, and men who come on horseback, with their steel and their banners—who come to take their home from them.

_Those_  wicked men have not been seen for years and years and years. But there is no such thing as peacetime. There is  _no such thing_.

They leave where they lived for nearly two years in pockets, one by one, as they always do. It’s safer this way. Each day, more people pack up while a small group of people move out of the area. They never look back.

Never.

They’re not leaving because it’s time. They’re leaving because they’ve been finding things. Things that leave them unsettled, leave them fearing for the lives of their children.

(Despite training, they still fear. It is  _human_  to fear.)

Wendy is the one who found the first ones. Wendy, who lost her parents in a war she was not a part of, that she’d been barely alive to see. She’d been a tiny toddler, sick with fever, with two baby brothers left in the huts to be taken care of while men and woman fought side by side against other peoples—other  _vicious_ people.

Wendy, who lost her brothers to the fever she somehow survived when she was barely old enough to learn how to wield a knife. Wendy, who was raised by a fellow orphan, Tinker Bell, to fight with a knife, slip from tree to tree, and creep through the tall grass of the hills, like the breeze nobody can see. Wendy, who killed a boy at the age of thirteen because he’d been trying to wedge his blade in between Tink’s ribs.

(She had not let him. She had slit his throat before he could take the final step that would get him close enough to Tinker Bell so he could slice right through her like her skin was made of the mud found just after a heavy rain.)

She had been out, scouting. She had been searching with a girl named Tiger Lily for any signs of—well, anybody, because many had said that they’d felt eyes watching them from behind the trees, hidden by darkness and the sound of the river nearby.

They’d split up, because Tiger Lily had found tracks—muddied and smudged, but still tracks. She hadn’t given any other explanation: she’d simply disappeared into the foliage as the light of day had continued to fade.

Wendy hadn’t been sure what she’d been looking for, but she’d tripped—over a root, a rock,  _something_ , because her mind had been far, far away from her, and then she saw it.

The mud here had been disturbed: it was more than trampled, more than stamped on. It had been  _dug up_ , and the sight before her eyes had her leaning over to wretch behind a tree, her hands suddenly clammy and shaking.

Bodies hung from the trees ahead of her like the charms the elders hung above the makeshift cradles in the traveling village, the ones mothers either carried on their backs or tugged behind them in carts. Some were whole, strung crudely together with torn pieces of fabric, while the top halves swung from higher branches and bottom halves were strewn across the clearing she’d stumbled upon. Swords and spears and helmets had been piled up at the base of each tree, dry, dusty, dirty, and still bloodstained.

This is  _wrong_.

If there was any rule any  of the people who walked through this land shared, no matter who they were, it was that no one—absolutely  _no one_ —should disturb the dead. Bronze, steel, shields, fabrics, and other items found on the dead were to remain with the dead, buried deep under the ground.

If one should disturb a place like this, even a place belonging to those who built that wall that seemed to go on as far as the eye could hope to see, they would be—

Well, no one was to do it. You either were very stupid, very bold, or full of a violent, constant bloodlust—or maybe something else—to do something like this, to do  _this_.

And these had been old graves. The bones are dusty, free of flesh, but it is still real enough to have her heaving again when she tries to stand up straight and look at the scene before her eyes again.

Tiger Lily came running, saw what she had seen, and had dragged a vomit-covered, shaking Wendy back to Tink, before running off to find the elders, the experienced soldiers.

Two days later, they gave the order to begin packing and moving out, to the next location they deemed fit.

As fate would have it, Wendy and Tink are put in the last pocket to leave, the ones taking up the rear of the tribe of blue-skinned people who train their children to kill with their bare hands, who have been walking across the fields and through the clumps and scattered trees of this land longer than that wall has been standing.

Scouts from the first pockets circle back to them, silent like a leaf on the wind, and report that more ancient graves—those of the men who come in armor, those of rival tribes, of which they haven’t seen the likes of for seasons now, and those of their own ancestors. More bones have been dug up. More bones have been hung on tree branches, weapons piled high.

(They do not give up on reburying them, though. No matter how many, these people: they have their ways. This is one of them.)

The trek across the green and the mud is slow-going, but their loads are light, this time, and lately, over the last week and a half, they’ve been coming across less and less desecrated mass graves. It is something of a relief. The feeling of grass sliding under her bare feet makes her forget, for a time, the things they’ve seen. The quiet is familiar to them. But they still feel eyes burning into the backs of their skulls, always a constant, slight pressure on the nape of their necks.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Wendy asks, two weeks in, when they’ve stopped for the night.

“Wherever they take us,” Tink replies, cramming berries into her mouth.

It happens when almost half of them—Wendy’s almost-half—have regrouped.

Tink is telling a story, a story about a boy with a long scar on his face. A boy whom she once knew when she was a small child—but then he was no longer there: he had disappeared into the trees, like the fog gradually fades from morning. She’s talking about something she never,  _ever_  talks about—because she is from a different tribe, one that was nearly killed off by another, another rival of their own, and talking about her old one is difficult and  _painful_.

They’re all walking, stretched thin across the field, with Wendy taking up the rear, only several feet behind Tink. Daylight is beginning to fade, and already the chill of night has arrived.

She hears something—a gust, a breath, a twitch,  _something_ —and whirls around, hand going to the sheath on her hip Killian had made her when she was small, but the knife isn’t there.

It isn’t  _there_.

Wendy opens her mouth, to call out to Tink—because something is wrong, she left with her knife, she did, she  _did_ —

A cold, damp hand slaps over her mouth at the same time something solid surges forward with such force that it has her careening backwards, her arms flailing as her back hits the ground, as the grass comes up like water around her till the only thing she can see and feel is the body holding hers down, pressing her into the mud.

She tries to speak, despite the hand over her lips. She tries to bite it, but she can do nothing. Her arms are sailing up, up, up, ready to crack against a skull, but then she can feel the flat of a blade being pressed up against her collar bone, and her hands freeze.

She squints up at the face—the face of a boy, who’s got leaves stuck in his hair and black paint on his cheeks.

There’s something that she thinks might be dried blood on his neck, on his hands, that she can taste. She has to warn them. She has to warn them, to fight, to—

A war cry rings out, and it is not one of her own who let it. Then she hears shouting, and she’s sure the rest of his band—whoever they are—have materialized out of the grass.

“Wendy!” she hears Tink shouting, “ _Wendy_!”

Wendy doesn’t hesitate. She brings up her fist, cracks it against her assailant’s skull—pretends she doesn’t see the smile that crept up on his face when she was trying to bite his hand. She shoves him off of her, and lunges. Knife or no knife, she was raised to kill, and she  _will kill him_  for this.

“I’m alright!” she hollers, hoping Tink will hear her—know that it’s here, even though she can hear the sounds of battle not far off from where she is in the grass, wrestling his curled, wicked-looking knife away from him and plunging it into his chest. She twists it, even as his eyes widen, and his mouth opens in a silent scream, for good measure, and pulls it out. Leaves him bleeding on the ground as she gets up slides easily into the fray.

Bodies are already littering the ground, but she doesn’t concentrate on who they might be. She only sees Killian fighting off two vicious, blood-covered boys, and she lunges again—this time with a shout—as the stolen knife cuts easily through the cloth covering their backs. She tries not to notice how the blood runs down the blade and makes her hold on the knife loose, how it slicks up the sides of her fingers and runs down the underside of her arm.

Wendy feels like she’s dancing, dancing from on opponent to the next, until she hears someone shriek _“Stop!_ ”

They all freeze. The boys seem to quickly back away, into some sort of blob, and—

Wendy sees him.

He’s got bones hung around his neck, blood splashed across his naked torso, his neck, his cheeks. War paint mixed with the savagery she can see glimmering in his eyes makes her blood run cold.

Her people—they might be brutal, train their children to kill, but he is an  _animal_.

“Who are you?” she hears Tink ask, but she cannot see her. Her insides are churning because she can feel the blood drying on her hands and all she can see when she blinks is the boy she killed in the grass. “Why are you doing this?”

“This is my land,” the boy at the front says. And he might not be tallest, he might look more wiry than his band of boys—boys, they’re all  _boys_  that look older and younger and the same age as her—

None of these boys are familiar to her.

Her people have always been at war—but these are mere  _boys_ , boys who have been turned savage and vicious by—by—

Him.

It has to be the boy at the front. He looks like he could lead them—tear them away from what they were before, take them it, teach them to—to—

“It—it is  _not_  your land,” Killian sputters, angrily, from somewhere nearby. “It is not  _anyone’s_ land. It is the _people’s_  land—the tribes’ land.”

The boy scoffs. “This is Pan’s land, and I’ll have my boys here kill the rest of you if I see you again.”

Wendy wants to  laugh.  _Laugh_. Has he ever been here before? This is not  _his_  land, this is not  _any one person’s land_. This is the land of the nomads, the people who are forced to move because of seasons and war and death and disease and prosper and always, always,  _always_  men with steel who come on horseback to slaughter woman, man, and child alike.

“Boy, we’ve killed plenty of yours.”

But not enough. Wendy sees that now. Most of the dead are of  _her_  people.

She hears the boy laugh—and it is truly a cutting, vicious sound, drenched in the blood of people she’s known all her life and people who came into from last summer, when they found the remains of a desolated, desecrated village with few survivors because of what the men of the wall had one—and then—and then—

Killian flies forward, and, by default, the rest of them do, too.

Hours later, they are walking through the dark. Bloodied, wounded, and depleted of their numbers. Badly. Only seven of the boys from the band of animals—who have bones hanging from their belts, their ears, and that had made some of the older ones see red and swing their blades and hands faster than they had ever before.

Wendy had felt sick to her stomach, when the boy— _Pan_ , he’d been taunting Killian since the battle had started up again—had called his savage fighters away. She had felt sick, with blood drying on her arms, her face, her neck. She had felt sick with the knowledge that she had taken more lives today than any other in her lifetime.

(But she does not wretch in the grass this time. She allows Killian to lead her away from the bodies of the fallen, towards a wounded Tink who’s lying in the grass, face wet with tears, hand pressing down on her stomach. Blood fresh and wet on her own hands.)

Wendy is supporting Tink’s waist. She was stabbed, by a tall boy, with a long scar on his face and hands that handled arrows and bows like Tink can kill a man with her bare hands, and since then, she hasn’t talked. Hasn’t said a word.

But they know.

He is the boy from her story. The story she told before.

_“Felix,”_  Tink tells Wendy, the next morning, when they’ve discovered a new upturned gravesite. When they’ve begun unstringing the dead from the trees and putting them back in the holes in the ground. “His name is Felix.”

Tink doesn’t say anything more, but she wants to. She wants to ask why,  _why_ —

But they walk on.

They are at war, with boys who walk like they’ve been on this earth longer than the wall has stood, and they haven’t, they  _haven’t_. It has their blood boiling, their people seething—but they walk in silence, after that.

The begin coming across reburied-bodies, buried by those who came before them.

And then they wonder.

Who? Who are they?  _What_ are they?

And Pan—Wendy wants to know,  _why_? Why would he—he—

No one knows. But Wendy will find out. She  _will_.

When they find their people, unharmed, and unaware of the carnage the last pocket of nomads saw the night before, Tink makes Wendy promise. Makes her promise that she will  _kill_  the Pan—the boy who claims to own this land. And although she is sick, sick with the deaths of the family that’s not of her blood and the boys who tried to slit her throat or squeeze the life out of her, she promises Tink she will. She  _will_  kill him.

( _But not_ , she thinks,  _if he kills her first_.)


	94. Fatality (originally posted on Sep. 24th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> michemistic: "Modern Dark Sexy AU!prompt please? Innocent 15 yr. old Wendy sneaks into London's hottest nightclub "Neverland." She only wanted 1 fun night. Unfortunately, the dangerous, 18 yr. old, bad boy owner known as "The Pan" blackmails her to be his woman."

Wendy Darling does not dance. She does not “go clubbing” and she certainly doesn’t party. She keeps her eyes glued to the pages of her books, her blonde hair braided, running along her spinal cord, and her black dress shows polished.

Wendy  does not dance, but this doesn’t stop Ruby or Tink—the older girls who live in her building across the hall—from creeping out when it’s half-past-nine, presumably so  they can come back in the early, laughing loudly, with glitter stuck to their shoes, the stench of alcohol on their clothes, and their arms slung around each other’s necks.

They’re the only friends she has.

It’s okay, that they leave, every Friday and Saturday night—they leave her alone, to read, alone, in her flat, in the kitchen. It’s okay, because she doesn’t really do anything else. There’s school, there’s the chores, there’s watching John and Michael when her parents are working—which is  _always_ —

It’s half-past-seven on a Friday night when they knock loudly on her door. No one’s home. John and Michael are at a friend’s house. Her parents are out—out somewhere, she can’t remember what they’d told her. All she can remember is what the heroine of her book had been doing when her parents had talked at her from the doorway.

They let themselves in, even when she yells, “I’ll be there in a moment!” and when she looks up from her page, she sees that they are, indeed, dressed for a night out.

She feels a twinge of jealousy. They have  _fun_ , every weekend. They go places.

Wendy? Wendy stays home. Every weekend.

“You’re going with us,” Ruby says, grinning. She’s got that glow to her—the glow that makes her lipstick look vibrant, her eyes glitter in the overhanging light’s glare. “Tonight. Right now. We won’t even make you change.”

Wendy blinks, and then slowly looks at Tink—

Who happens to be looking at her, expectantly. Waiting.

“Come on,” Ruby says, approaching slowly, and, even slower, reaches forward, and takes the book from under Wendy’s elbows, and tosses it in the direction of the couch.

She hears it hit the floor, and tries not to wince and the thought of the spine being damaged.

“I don’t have to change? You’re sure?”

She looks down at herself. Black tights, brown skirt, white shirt, navy jumper. Simple, comfortable, bland—but not at all, well,  _suitable_  for any kind of club that these two would go to. Surely.

Wendy has never been told she isn’t allowed to go out, with friends, and have fun. But she’s never asked, and she’s sure that her parents think that she doesn’t have any friends. Friends her own age, no, but she has these two girls.

She should say no. She  _should_  say no.

“It’ll be an adventure,” Ruby says, grinning.

“You always read about them in your books,” prompts Tink, from beside her. She smiles a gentle smile, and Wendy can feel the loneliness tugging at her ribs, even as she nods, slowly.

Ruby cheers in triumph. Tink grins, like they’ve accomplished something huge. They don’t think to ask her if it’s alright with her mother and father. They just take her by her hands—which are hidden by the sleeves of her jumper—and lead her out of her flat. They go down the stairs, chattering, but all the while, Wendy is wondering.

Is this right? Should she call her mother’s office? Is her mother on her way home? What about John and Michael? What if they want to come home? What if—

“And you’ll never guess where we’re going, Wendy!” Tink says, brightly, interrupting her thoughts.

Wendy blinks. “Where?” What had they been talking about? Was it important? How—

“Why, only the hottest club in  _London_ ,” Ruby says, grinning as they exit the building, and cross the street.

It’s cold. Perhaps she should have brought a coat.

“ _Neverland_ ,” Rubby supplies, when Wendy doesn’t say anything, “it’s  _Neverland!_  We’ve been trying to get into that club for weeks!”

This club doesn’t sound very fun. No club ever sounds like fun, though. What’s so special about this club?

“Felix gave me VIP stamps,” Tink says to Wendy, smiling—a bit lopsidedly—“he gave me two, originally, but I asked if I could bring another friend.”

Felix?

“Who’s Felix?”

When Tink ducks her head, she knows. She knows, even in the lamplight, by the flush spreading from her neck, to her cheeks, to her ears. Ruby’s laugh rings out across the street.

Tink has never mentioned a Felix before. But she’s never mentioned anyone before. Once, there was a Killian—but that was a long time ago.

So he must be special. Right?

And then—

“I’m underage,” Wendy says, feeling her insides begin to squish together at the thought—she’s doing something wrong, wrong,  _wrong_ , this is wrong, it has to be, this doesn’t feel  _right_ —

“We know, Wendy,” Ruby gives her a look, a sly grin, “we’re not going to let you  _do_  anything.”

They’re both twenty-one. She’s fifteen. She hopes they won’t.

Tink and Ruby begin to talk again, over her head, and she begins to wonder.

What does one do in a club? How does one go out and expect to come back with hearing? Can she avoid the alcohol? Is there someplace she can sit where she can curl up and wait for Tink and Ruby to come get her? Does she have to dance? What’s so special about this club anyway? She thinks, now, that someone could’ve mentioned it, at school, but that can’t be right. Can it? The one she thought she heard the girls talking about outside the classroom sounded so gritty, so dark, so—

Before Wendy knows it, they’re there.

The line goes around the block corner. Girls and boys, women and men, are waiting to go inside. There’s a tall, looming figure standing by the door. Music that she can feel through the soles of her feet—that throbs through the air like an erratic, stolen (frantic) heartbeat—threatens to have her bones vibrate under her skin. She can feel it in her molars. She clenches her teeth in response.

The sign is neon green, and in a slashed, fancy scrawl that looks like it was handwritten.  _Neverland_  is emblazoned, proudly, as the music drowns out whatever the people in line are saying.

No one looks at her twice. It’s nice, but—

Tink immediately steers them forward, towards the door. She takes her arm away from Wendy to dig out three cards, with a blooming purple flower, of some sort, on each one, and hands them to the young man, whom, she assumes, is the bouncer.

Her looks from Tink, to Ruby, and then to her, before nodding and stepping aside, taking the red rope with him. And then they’re inside, going down a short hall, and then—

Bodies. There are dancing, grinding, moving bodies everywhere. Immediately, Ruby and Tink vanish from her sight, and she feels panic begin to build up in her chest. She thought they weren’t going to leave her. She thought they were going to be with her for however long they’re going to stay here—

She remembers Tink saying something about this being the more exclusive club in the city, she remembers seeing how  _happy_  they’d looked at the thought of going, to this place, full of sweaty, drunk bodies all moving together while she stood still, afraid and unaware of what to do.

No one seems to notice that she’s even there.

To her, these gyrating bodies all look—well,  _possessed_ , as the music pounds into her ear drums and reverberates in her spine.

She opens her mouth, to call out, over the sound of the music, but then she sees it—a break in the crowd—a  _sitting_  area.

Relief washes over her like the ocean would if she were standing with her toes in the water during a storm as she begins to make her way through the crowd. Once or twice, she catches a glimpse of Tink and Ruby, both dancing with partners—and Felix, is he the one with the jagged scar cutting across his skin, his hands on Tink’s hips, draping around her waist, his lips at her ear?

It probably is. Tink’s face is flushed.

When she finally breaks free of the crowd, it feels like a breath of fresh air, and she wonders why they thought it would be a good idea to take her here. Because it wasn’t, it really wasn’t.

But before she can make her way to the black leather couch that seems to be yawning towards her—beckoning her closer—she feels a hand on her arm, and she stops. Has she done something wrong? Has—

She turns her head, and she starts at the sight in front of her.

An older boy—older than fifteen, surely, stands before her. His hair is mussed, and sticking up, like he’s had hands running through it. His cheeks are tinged red. His shirt sticks to his skin like it’s a second skin. His eyes are bright and all pupil, and—

He leans in close, so close, looking at her like he’s just found something  _new_ , and that can’t be—that can’t be—she’s never seen this boy before—

“Come dance with me,” he says, and she feels his cold, cold fingers slip under her jumper, her shirt— _when did it get so hot?_ —and graze the skin of her waist. “Come on now.” His voice is low, soft, but still, but  _still_ , there’s something about it that she doesn’t like—something that makes her want to zip her mouth shut and tear out of the club like she never has before—

Then he’s leading her back, back onto the dance floor, and then she can feel that she’s nervous. Her hands are clammy. Her heart is pounding feverishly into chest. Can’t she say no? Or is that what strangers do? Do they take other strangers by the hand and lead them into the throng? Do they always put their hands on their hips, and begin to move, fluid and graceful behind them, to the music threatening to make her deaf?

Do they?

Maybe it occurs to this boy that she can’t dance, because she’s simply swaying back and forth—

“It’s okay,” she hears him whisper in his ear, somehow loud over the music. His hands goes up from her hip, under her shirt, across her stomach, a finger slides down towards her skirt—

“It’s okay,” and she doesn’t know that it is, but then his mouth is on her ear, and his other arm is now holding her against him, and what is this what is this what is this—

“First time, then,” he smiles into her hair, and then his hand is gone from under her shirt—but there it is, _there it is_ , sliding up her tight-clad thigh, nails scraping a slow, burning trail through the fabric—

And then she’s moving. Her hips are in time with his, even though her movements are muted, limited, _awkward_. He’s pulling her backwards, so when her back meets his chest, her cheeks flush. She’s never danced like this—never danced at all—and her heart’s beating in her ribcage like it wants to run away, but maybe but maybe it isn’t as bad as she thought it’d be. Maybe—

“Come on,” he says, in her ear, and then she realizes that his hand is up her skirt, fingers easily maneuvering around the fabric until he finds the top of her tights, and he begins to tug, tug, tug—

She’s panicking, deep inside, because is this what people do on the floor? Do they let strangers slip their cold, cold fingers—

When he rolls his hips, she feels something in her belly twist, and she feels a whoosh of air escape her lungs, because what—what was  _that_ , it felt so  _good_ —

“You’re  _new_ here, aren’t you,” he says into her hair—not  a question—and then, he’s pushing her through the crowd, abruptly. Still keeping her close—hand on her waist, one on her hip, but she lets him—oh god,  _why can’t she just call for help_ —

Do people do this? Do they?

She doesn’t know. Maybe she’ll be brave enough to ask Tink tomorrow morning—

He doesn’t lead her away from the crowd, like she thought he would. No, they’re in a different spot this time. The lights seem darker here, more vibrant when they flash in time with the music.

And then he’s pushing, pushing, pushing her backwards, his left hand deftly slipping up her skirt  _again_ while his right arm wraps around her waist, pulling her to him just as her back hits the wall—

And he’s still dancing, but he’s dancing  _against_  her. She feels something low—lower than her belly—she feels it  _burn_ , and she wonders she wonders she wonders as he pushes forward and  _up_ , again and again—

“Your name,” he says as he pushes himself towards her, so they fit,  _they_  fit, like they’ve been molded together, but then she realizes that he’s gathering her skirt up in a bunch of fabric in his hands, and her tights aren’t covering her thighs anymore,  _how_ —

“Wendy,” she manages, when he stills against her, like it’s a newfound treasure, “ _Wendy Darling_ —”

He makes a sound in her ear, and she wonders why she’s not screaming for help—running for the door, because she’s never done anything like this.

Has she been so boring that she  _wants_  to be here? Is that it? Is that why she had so seemingly easily agreed to going, when she  _shouldn’t be here_ —

Then he’s twisting up, up, up, with his index finger, and she’s pitching forward,  _keening_ , because  _how how how why why why_ —

“Come on then, Darling,” he hisses into her ear, twisting and crooking  _again and again_  until her knees are trembling, until her insides are on  _fire_ , until the only thing she can see and smell and taste and feel is this  _boy_ , this  _stranger_ —

“You know,” he says, breathing into her ear while confusion swims inside her, churns up and down and around, “I was having a  _splendid_  night, until I saw you—you weren’t even dancing. You were  _standing_ there, and I thought—‘how can you be here without wanting to  _dance_ ’—so I’ll make you dance, I  _will_ , if it’s the last thing I do.”

Why is she doing this? Why—

“I’ve seen you around,” his teeth scrape against the shell of her ear, and she shivers, and then she cries out—because  _two fingers_ , turning and twisting— “I’ve seen you in school, you know. You’re too quiet, you’re too still, you’re too—” he makes a sound in his throat, and she wonders, for the life of her, if she’s possessed, if she ate something funny before she left, if—

“You’re so  _innocent_ ,” he snarls, twisting suddenly, to the right, and then she’s trying to move  _with_ him—unsuccessfully, but she’s never done this before,  _never never never but why can’t she stop why does she want to why why why—_

“ _Dar-ling_ ,” he sing-songs, like he can hear her thoughts, and then he’s pulling his fingers back, wiping them on his shirt, but then he’s surging forward. He’s got his mouth on hers, lips sliding, slick with sweat and saliva, and she’s still  _burning_  inside. His hips haven’t stopped moving to the beat, not even when she’d been grasping his shirt and gasping into his shoulder and—

She makes a noise, deep and high in her throat, like a whine, and then he’s pulling back, back, back— _no no no_ —why why  _why_ —

School? How does he know her from school?

“I expect you back here tomorrow,” he says, and then he’s dropping to his knees, and  _why_ would he do that? What is he doing?  Why does he want her back tomorrow? She doesn’t even know his  _name_. What—

“And, darling,” he says, pulling up her skirt so it bunches around her hips, waiting until Wendy is looking down at him, “come without the tights.”

Then he’s scraping his way with his teeth up her thighs, slow like a snail, leaning burning trails of flushed skin—and then—and then—

Wendy lets her head fall back against the wall. She closes her eyes—

They snap open.

“ _Peter,_ ” she snarls, looking down at him. He looks back at her, grin creeping up across his lips, and  _she knows this boy she knows him knows him knows him_ —

Boy who walks around with his hands shoved in his pockets, spine curved like a cat’s, ready to pounce—boy who looks at her like he wants to either stomp on her or eat her up like a wolf—

“Yes, me,” he  _chortles_  at her, and then, “you’re not leaving here just yet.”

And—

Wendy does not leave.


	95. Fly Me Away (originally posted on Sep. 24th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> its-binx: "au/storybrooke- wendy and peter are watching Up! on night and wendy starts crying saying she wants to have adventures like that and peter teases her. (i really like the au were peter's punishment for being a little shit is being forced to grow up in storybrooke.) also love your drabbles! keep being awesome! :D"

"That was a wonderful movie," Wendy says, wiping at her eyes as the begin to roll.

On the couch next to her, Peter scoffs. “It wasn’t  _that_  sad, Wendy,” he starts, but then she’s already speaking:

"I want to have adventures like them, Peter," she says, turning to him, eyes wide and imploring, nose red, tears dripping off her chin, and all he wants is to  _kiss her_  and kiss them away so she’ll stop crying.

Girls, Peter knows. Tears, not so much. He’s unaccustomed to the sight. He doesn’t quite know what to do about the drops staining her favorite sweater.

But he knows he wants her to  _stop_.

"You mean, tie a bunch of balloons to the top of a house, and fly away? And meet a talking dog?"

His tone is meant to be harsh, to distract her from it, but her head’s already so far gone - up in the clouds,  _sky high._

"Oh, wouldn’t that be  _grand_.” Wendy claps her hands together.

"I wish we could go to a place," she says, turning to Peter, excitedly, her face glowing in the light of the screen of the television in her parents’ living room, "where we didn’t have to grow up."

"And what would we do there, Wendy? Besides not grow up."

It sounds nice, actually. Wishful thinking, of course, but  _nice_.

"We could fly," she says, eyes wide, "we could swim with the mermaids, Peter. We could run through the forests, we could climb all the trees we wanted."

(He smirks in his throat, because (maybe maybe maybe) seeing her hanging upside down from a tree with nothing but a nightgown on is something he’d like to see.)

"I could chase you," he tries, eyebrow cocked, waiting for her objection, but she just nods, smiling brightly, her tears forgotten.

"And we could have a treehouse," she goes on, like she didn’t hear him, "we could have a tiger!"

"A tiger," Pan deadpans, disbelievingly.

“ _Yes_ ,” Wendy says, crossing her skinny arms across her chest, scowling at him, “we could!”

"Oh yes?" he laughs at her, and then leans in closer. Puts a hand on either side of her, his nails digging into the leather of the couch. "And who would be in charge of this fairytale land?Hm?  _You_?”

"Yes," she tells him, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, "of course."

And that -

That makes something deep down in him twist, like his insides are frowning up at Wendy through his skin, because - because -

What about  _him?_

Why couldn’t he be king? Why -

He shakes his head, and plants a kiss on her cheeks, and she laughs, the wistfulness fading from her eyes as she reaches out towards him, making grabbing motions with her fingers, because it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t matter.

It’s wishful thinking.

That’s it.


	96. To Poison (originally posted on Sep. 24th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> zangetsuh: "(Prompt for Darling Pan (jfc I'm so angry)) Wendy was never in the cage because after the second time of coming to Neverland she got evil and she was the one that came up with the idea to fool Henry. S what I mean is when Peter comes to her little house and asks her for her help because he doesn't know what to do with Henry and sexy time ensues."

”Wendy,” he calls out, knocking on the wood of the floor as he climbs up the ladder to the treehouse,  _"Wendy_ , where are you?”

When he turns his head, he sees her, sprawled out on the bed. She doesn’t turn to look at him when he closes the trapdoor behind him.

"You’re  _supposed_ to be looking like you’re sick,” he says, eyes narrowed as he watches her roll onto her stomach, and lifts her chin at him. Propped up on her elbows, looking at him like that -

_Ugh_. 

"But it’s my plan, remember?" she smiles sweetly at him, "I said Henry would come, and he will. Trust me, Peter, he will."

“ _Wendy_ ,” he starts, but then she’s grinning at him, grinning like he used to grin at her, when she used to be a mouse in the wolf’s jaws.

(But she has sharp teeth now.)

"Later," she promises him, waggling her eyebrows, and then collapses back onto her stomach, and rolls onto her back. "Now, if I’m not mistaken,  _Peter_  - “

"I know, I know," he says, glaring.

She’s staring up at the ceiling. She’s picking at her nails, idly, like she’s bored.  _Bored_ , while there are strangers in  Neverland, strangers that might take her away - _  
_

"I’ll see you soon," she says, and tilts her head back so she can look at him, her tangled hair spilling from behind her head like a splattered halo.

When she blinks, he is gone.

And for a moment, she wonders. Wonders if this is right, tricking Henry - doing this - but she’s been right about everything else so far. So why can’t she be right about this?

But then she laughs.

It’ll be okay. Henry will fall for it. Everyone always does.

And then Peter will make everyone go away. Everyone will either be dead, or swept away, and then it can be just them. Them, and the lost boys.


	97. Bitter Biter (originally posted on Sep. 25th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Felix says that Wendy and Baelfire are both out in the jungle, the scene he’d expected was—well—

He had not been hoping for this.

He peers through the trees, eyes locked on the two figures sitting side by side, their backs hunched, their heads close together. His fingers curl into a fist, but something tells him to wait.

So he does.

“We need to find a way off this island,” Baelfire says, looking around him—like he can  _sense_ that Peter is near.

But he can’t. It isn’t  _his_  jungle.

“There is none,” Wendy says, chin in the palm of her hand, her elbow on her knee. “The mermaid—Ariel—she told me.”

“Mermaid?”

“Yes—I can have you meet her, if you’d like.”

They’re silent, for a moment, and then,

“You were right, Bae.”

“About what?”

“About magic.”

“Wendy—”

“No, you were. How can magic be wonderful if we can’t go home?”

Peter watches Baelfire— _Bae_?—struggle to find the words she needs to hear, but he can’t, he can’t, because he isn’t  _Peter_.

_Peter_  knows exactly what to say to cheer her up. He knows what kinds of jokes to tell and where she’s ticklish and—

_Kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him kill him—_

“I want to go home now,” she says, and he heard his snivel— _snivel!_ —“Bae, can you take me home?”

Baelfire doesn’t say anything, and that— _that_ —

That brings satisfaction rumbling forth from his chest. He feels it fill him up, down to his toes.

Stupid, stupid,  _stupid boy_ —

“We should go,” Wendy says, quite abruptly, and stands up. Balefire looks up at her, looking a little bewildered, a little desperate, like he wants to apologize for not saying the words that  _Peter_  would have.

Peter would lie to Wendy, he would, yes. But he knows what to say.

He sees Wendy wipe at her chees as soon as she turns away from Baelfire and begins her trek into the jungle, back towards the camp.

And he thinks—

Baelfire can never have her. She is  _his_. Nothing will change that. Not this stupid boy, not the way Felix looks at her—like he’d like to gut her on the spot, not the way the Lost Boys taunt her— _none_ of that will change it.

She’s here to stay. Wendy Darling is  _his_.

But Baelfire—

Is expendable, at best. To be dealt with, in the near future—but that can wait. He has time. He has  _time_.

Peter wants to kill him, rip off his head and throw it at Wendy’s feet, and gloat as the tears fall from her face. But he does not. He does not, when he can. When he has the power to.

He thinks that, somehow, this must be Wendy Darling’s fault. Naïve, hopeful little  _darling_ that insists on doing the  _good_  thing—

A week later, while she’s out heading towards the cliff, he’ll tackle her to the ground. His hands will claw their way up her nightgown and he will bite burning paths into her skin.

And the red will not leave his vision until he’s collapsed beside her, on the jungle floor, already planning each and every way he could kill the boy who draws pictures on his walls—the boy who Wendy holds most dear here.

The boy she holds most dear—

It is not Peter.

Peter  _hates_  Bae for that. He hates him so much he wants to tear him open with his bare hands and rip his insides out.

But he doesn’t.

Instead, he keeps his hands shoved in his pockets, his legs swinging from tree branches, his hands up Wendy’s dress—

Instead, he waits.

 


	98. Bread Crumbs (originally posted on Sep. 25th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anonymous: "Writing Prompt: Wendy and Pan have a meal together."

Wendy has been craving steaming, buttered rolls for weeks now. She hasn’t said anything to Pan about it.

How could she? She’s not actually  _hungry_. She just - she just wants rolls, is all.

Rolls soaked in gravy. Yes. That sounds lovely.

She waits a month before she asks Peter if he can make her something to eat, because, well, his magic prevents them all from being hungry.

Of  _course_  he’s concerned, because he thinks she’s hungry.

“No,  _Peter_ ,” she tries again when he steps closer, presumably to inspect her, “I just want some  _rolls_. That’s it. I haven’t eaten in  _months_.”

“But you’re not hungry,” he says slowly, his brow furrowing.

“Just—just do it, please.”

And he does.

With a frown and a wave of his hand, a plate of hot, steaming rolls drenched in gravy appear before her, on the ground.

She cannot stop the grin that cuts into her cheeks as she plops down onto the dirt and eagerly reaches for a roll.

It doesn’t matter that she’s staining her dress, or that Peter’s looking at her like she’s grown a second head.

“ … this doesn’t make sense,” he says, like he doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t, he really doesn’t, so she shoves a roll towards him. When it’s about to drip onto his tunic, he takes it, quickly, with a scowl, and stuffs the hot stuff into his mouth.

His eyes go wide.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” she asks around a mouthful, reaching for another roll.

But then he’s nodding, chewing, swallowing, chewing, swallowing again, and batting her hand away to take the one she was reaching for.

“I made it,” he tells her, still scowling, even though his eyes are bright and his cheeks are flushed—with something she’d like to think is akin to happiness, to joy, “I should get that one.”

“You didn’t  _make it_ , Peter,” she says, laughing at him. “You can’t just  _make_  bread, out of thin air.”

Also—he hasn’t eaten in centuries, right? Why does  _he_  need to eat  _her_  rolls?

“But I did.”

“But that’s not  _making it_.”

The look he gives her makes her shake her head, and she smiles around another mouthful—

But then,  _Mother. Father._

They had the freshest, softest,  _warmest_  bread. John and Michael would get the first pieces,  _always_ , since they were younger—

_I miss you_.

Peter does not take notice of the sorrow grasping at her heart with broken fingers. Instead, he takes another roll. He doesn’t blink twice when she lets him have the rest.


	99. Strike One (originally posted on Sep. 27th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> amphitrites: "prompt for darling pan: wendy steals a kiss from a supposedly sleeping peter."

She does not mean for it to happen. Well, she had, but—

When she climbs up into her treehouse, Wendy is dead tired, caked in mud, and—well, angry.

Peter had thought it delightful that he should chase her out of the Lost Boys’ camp that morning. He’d been eager,  _so eager_ , to chase her through the jungle, at top speed. Hollering at the top of his lungs at her, he’d pursued her through the valley south of the camp. He’d laughed when she’d stumbled, chortled when she’d tripped and landed face-first in the mud. And he’d waited until she’d found the strength to pick herself up off the ground, and onto her hands and knees.

Her limbs had been shaking with exhaustion, her lips from anger. She’d been struggling to get off her knees and onto her feet when he’d slammed into her, from behind, and knocked her to the jungle floor, expelling the air from her lungs as she’d hit the ground.

Now, with weak legs and bruises forming along her collar bone, she stumbles forward, and nearly trips—

Over her blanket.

Wendy lifts her eyes to the bed, and she nearly  _screams_  at the sight that greets her.

Peter is sprawled out haphazardly on her bed. The sheets are twisted around his legs, his bare feet sticking out where her pillow is supposed to be. His cheek is on the mattress, drool making a dart spot underneath it.

The anger from before begins to dissipate, even though she has a  _right_  to grab him by the hair and yank until he’s clawing at her arms while she drags him off her bed—the one place where he’s not supposed to be. The one place that he said was  _hers_.

But then—but then—

An idea occurs to her.

Peter—Peter Pan—he is anything but soft. Anything but  _tender_ —

No.  _No_. It’s a bad idea. No one sneaks up on the Pan— _no one_. Not even Felix— _Felix_ , of all people, wouldn’t dare do that.

None of the boys would do that.

But she is not a boy. She is a girl in a tattered white night gown, with leaves in her ear, fire burning in her chest, mud on her cheeks, and fingerprint bruising blossoming on the inside of her thighs.

So she creeps forward, fingers curling inward, towards the bed. Her feet are silent, so silent, in the room, and she thinks that, as she leans down, lips slightly parted, maybe she can get away with this.

She hesitates, for a split second—hovers above his forehead like she forgot how to move her head, before she does. She presses her dry lips to his forehead, and stays there—for a second too long, and then begins to rise.

But, before she can take her step back, his skeleton hands reach out and grab her by the tatters of her dress, and yanks.

An angry cry escapes her throat as his nails dig into the undersides of her wrists, as he rolls them over so he’s got a knee between her thighs and her hands pinned to the mattress.

And when he starts to laugh, she screams. She screams, and screams, and  _screams_ , while he laughs—until her voice is hoarse, and he’s got a knife pressed against her throat. Her hand is pressed between his and her chest, trapped—unable to do anything.  _Useless._

“Do it again, Wendy Darling,” he says into her hair, lips grazing the shell of her right ear, “go on, darling, go on and do it. Just  _do it_. Give me the chance—give me the opportunity to gut you, where you lie.”

Wendy squirms, but she cannot get away from him. She is locked in place, by this boy-king, this boy-king with a bone-knife cutting into the soft, pale skin of her throat.

“You can’t kill me,” she says, voice shaking, and says it like she believes it, even though she doesn’t. She can’t. Not with the bloodlust in his eyes, not with the way he grips the handle so tight his knuckles bleed pale. “You won’t, Peter Pan.”

“You’re right,” he says, after a moment, but then he’s moving the knife from her throat, out of her sight—no, no,  _no_ —

“But I won’t hesitate to slip it through your ribs, darling girl,” he hisses, pressing a harsh kiss into the side of her jaw. “Instead of killing you, I’ll stick my knife behind your knee, between your ribs, across your throat—until you’re  _begging me—_ ”

“ _Peter_ —”

He kisses her again, this time on the lips—open mouth, biting teeth, a swirling, curving tongue—

And then he’s gone. With a cut on her throat, a hammering heart, and stinging lips, she sits up, and swallows a sob.

“I want go home,” she whispers instead to the empty room, eyes glazing over with tears, to the remains of her nightgown, to the bruises forming on her waist, to the boy-king she knows is listening. “I want to go home.”


	100. In The Night (originally posted on Sep. 30th, 2014)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> suzycom: "peter sends his shadow to visit wendy while she sleeps, back in london (the shadow disperses over her when she wakes up)"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the last fic i posted before i decided that i was leaving the dp fandom.
> 
> i've got over a hundred drafts saved in my main tumblr, most of them are darling pan prompts. i am not currently taking prompts now (nor will i be taking them in the future, probably), but i am considering finishing them all off here. from what i remember, most of the prompts are from late 2013 and early 2014. i should answer them eventually. maybe. i'm not sure. i haven't been wanting to write a lot lately.
> 
> EDIT: 8/3/15
> 
> due to the fact that i have permanently left the darling pan fandom and have no intention of going back and that these are old prompts, i will not be adding to this collection. it's been fun.

It’s been too long.

For Wendy, it’s only been a week, but for the Pan, it feels like it’s been a century. Or more. He could be wrong.

Time in Neverland does not flow, it does not move. It merely stands still.

And it feels like he’s been waiting a long, long time.

He wants her back. But he remembers what he’d told her, before she’d been dragged off the beach by his shadow and flown up into the air, disappearing into the distance until she could not be seen against the setting sun anymore.

And the boys think she’s gone for good. They’d rejoiced, they’d laughed, when after she’d gone. Peter himself had  laughed, had pretended to  _rejoice_  at the fact that they’d sent the screaming girl away.

Even Felix believes Peter’s triumphant grins, his echoing laughter.

They’ve known him for centuries. Either they don’t know him, or he’s just that good.

So, in the night, when his boys are asleep, he sits awake, on the beach, his shoes soaking in the water that laps up at his knees. He’s frowning at the pattern he’s drawing in the sand with a stick, already imagining his shadow leaving the realm of Neverland, and to Wendy’s world.

The world without magic. Such a place sounds so  _boring_.

He already knows that it’s there. It’s a slight twist in his gut, a slight tug on his conscience, but he knows. if he closes his eyes, and concentrates hard enough, he can see her.

He can see her, curled under her soft, white sheets, tangled hair a mess, spilling from beyond her pillow to the corner of her bedspread. She’s got the blanket clutched tight in her hands, like how she learned to do in her sleep in Neverland.

The expression on her face is not peaceful, like it was in Neverland. Her brows are creased. Her cheeks are wet. She’s making barely audible noises somewhere in her throat and he knows, he  _knows_ , oh god, he knows  _exactly_  what he’s painted behind her eyelids - he knows she’s seeing blue and yellow from when he knocked her into the mud and left bruises all along her collar bones, her hips, her waist, her spine, the inside of her  _thighs_ , oh  _god_  …

(Distantly, he wonders if she ever got around to explaining the marks staining her skin. He wonders what they said, what they thought, when they saw their innocent little Wendy for the first time. He wonders what her brothers thought, when they saw her come into their room, dirty, disheveled, and puffy-eyed. He wonders.)

She murmurs something, something small, but he knows. He  _knows_.

(“ _Peter_ ,” she’d said, slurred by sleep but surely but surely it’d been that he’d heard.)

Peter curses uner his breath

He has made a mistake. A  _mistake_. And he needs her back, because she needs him, she does, she can’t lie to him when he’s seeing it like he’s hovering above her as she sleeps -

The second her eyes start to flutter open, the shadow disappears. And when it does, she disappears from his sight, and then he’s blinking up at the moon, on the beach of Neverland. He’s got soaked clothes, sand in his hair.

Wendy’s words are ringing in his ears.

“ _I don’t care about you, Peter! I don’t believe in you, and I certainly don’t love you. Or like you. Who could? Who would?”_

He remembers thinking that she couldn’t have meant what she said, he remembers thinking that she could have, for all he knew -

but now, but  _now_.

He knows.

Peter  _knows_.


End file.
